A constitutive model to describe the mechanical behavior of sands under monotonic loading throughout the stress and strain range of engineering interest is presented. The model uses pressure-dependent elasticity, a three-invariant version of the Murata-Miura yield loci for plastic compression, an enhanced Matsuoka-Nakai criterion for inelastic shear response, and a 3D implementation of Rowe’s stress-dilatancy theory. In order to make the model useful and attractive to geotechnical engineers, its eight parameters were selected among those well known to the geotechnical community. Some numerical simulations are presented to compare the model’s performance against experimental results.
