Background on PM4Sand

  • The sand plasticity model PM4Sand2D was developed for geotechnical earthquake engineering applications by Professors Ross W. Boulanger (homepage) and Katerina Ziotopoulou (homepage) at the University of California at Davis. 
  • PM4Sand3D is a generalized version of the plane-strain PM4Sand2D model developed by Marie-Pierre Kippen, Ross W. Boulanger, and Katerina Ziotopoulou.
  • PM4Sand (2D or 3D) is a stress-ratio controlled, critical state-based, bounding surface plasticity model for sand (and other purely nonplastic granular soils) that has been implemented as a user-defined dynamic link library for use with the programs FLAC2D and FLAC3D by Itasca (homepage). The model was developed and implemented to approximate stress-strain responses of specific importance to geotechnical earthquake engineering and liquefaction problems.
  • The companion model, PM4Silt (homepage), is available for modeling saturated, low-plasticity silts and clays that exhibit stress-history normalized behaviors.
  • The other tabs on this website provide access to the user manuals, dynamic link libraries, example files, and various reference sources.
  • We appreciate hearing from users, so please do send us an email (rwboulanger at ucdavis.edu or kziotopoulou at ucdavis.edu) and let us know about your applications and experiences. 
Stress and strain graphs
Emankments