A unified approach to the analysis of saturated-unsaturated elastoplastic porous media

The paper presents a unified approach to the analysis of saturated-unsaturated porous media. The approach is based on a generalized formulation of Biot’s theory. The governing equations are nonlinear due to the dependence of the material parameters on the degree of saturation. Furthermore, the soil skeleton is assumed to have an elastoplastic behaviour. The analysis involves also the tracking of the free surface. Attention is paid to the numerical problems arising when this moving discontinuity surface is within a finite element. The paper presents the governing equations and their numerical implementation. A numerical application is presented, which illustrates the capability of the computer code developed.