Experimental determination of hypoplastic parameters and cyclic numerical analysis for railway bridge backfills

Long integral bridges experience an enhanced cyclic soil structure interaction with their granular backfills, especially due to seasonal thermal loading. For numerical modelling of this interaction behaviour under cyclic loading, it is important to employ a suitable constitutive model and calibrate it thoroughly. However, up to the present, experimental data and calibrated soil models for this purpose with focus on typical well-graded coarse-grained bridge backfill materials are rarely available in the literature. Therefore, one aim of this paper is to present results of a comprehensive cyclic laboratory testing programme on highly compacted gravel backfill material. Based on this, a hypoplastic constitutive model with intergranular strain extension for small strain and cyclic behaviour is calibrated and evaluated against the experimental test data. The soil model’s abilities and limitations are discussed at element test level. In addition, cyclic FE analyses of an integral bridge are conducted with several hypoplastic parameter sets from the literature and compared to the calibrated gravel backfill material. The investigation highlights that poorly-graded sands show significantly smaller cyclic earth pressures compared to well-graded gravels intended for the backfilling of a bridge. The soil structure interaction behaviour is clearly governed by the general soil model stiffness, including the small strain stiffness.