At the present time, it is very common in practice (industry as well as in research) to utilise standard material models such as Mohr Coulomb and Drucker Prager to simulate the soil behaviour in the application of soil-structure interaction problems. These models are readily available in commercial finite element programs such as ABAQUS. The models are often chosen considering their simplicity, ease of use, reasonable computational time and the high level of understanding among the engineers. Furthermore, such models are widely popular in the community for modelling the behaviour of soils due to their relative simplicity and only requiring the basic soil properties (such as friction and dilation angles). The current study focuses on the application of such standard models to analyse laterally moving pipeline under plane strain condition. The results from the finite element analyses are compared with the large scale physical model test data. The results derived from user defined advanced constitutive soil models such as Nor-Sand and modified Mohr-Coulomb are also presented in comparison. Outcomes from the study revealed that Mohr-Coulomb model gives a better prediction of pipeline loads than from Drucker Prager model, which however can be used to match with the Mohr Coulomb response under plane strain condition. It is also shown that the advanced constitutive soil models give accurate prediction of pipeline loading in contrast to standard soil models due to their capability of modeling critical state behavior of soils. The performance of the standard models is also discussed using the available experimental results for friction angles in cohesionless soils.
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