Universal model forms for predicting the shear modulus and material damping of soils

Numerous model forms have been used to predict the dynamic behaviours of soils, mainly the shear modulus and material damping. These models are used to represent normalised shear modulus reduction and material damping curves. The majority of the existing models are empirical and were proposed for specific soil types, strain ranges, etc. Some are limited to the data used in fitting, but fail to provide a good fit to other sets of data. The available model functions are not universal, which means that a model developed for one soil type may not be applicable for use with other soil types. In this paper, two universal mathematical models were proposed to predict the normalised shear modulus reduction and material damping curves. The mathematical model forms are sufficiently flexible to be widely used with different soil types. The models were evaluated using verification data of eight different soil types, i.e., data that were not used to fit the model parameters. The results indicate that the proposed model forms can accurately model the dynamic soil properties within the typical earthquake range. The advantage of developing the two universal models are two-fold, first the forms are applicable for sand, clay, and fibre-soil composite and second with further testing of soils, the model coefficients could ultimately be used to further understand the physical processes in soil behaviour, especially damping.