The Barcelona Basic model (BBM) is a Cam-Clay type effective stress model for the behaviour of unsaturated clay-type soils. In contrast to the original BBM, the PLAXIS BBM is defined in terms of Bishop effective stress, suction as stress variables and Lode's angle dependency. A specific feature of the model is that it includes 'collapse' upon wetting.
The Barcelona Basic Model is introduced in PLAXIS 2023.1.
The Barcelona Basic Model has been developed with scientific support from the Polytechnic University Catalunya (UPC). This support is gratefully acknowledged.
With the release of PLAXIS 2D/3D CONNECT Edition V20 Update 1 (January 2020), the PLAXIS User Defined Soil models are delivered with the PLAXIS installation. When enabling the Geotechnical SELECT Entitlement [GSE] when starting the PLAXIS application, this model becomes available in the Parameters tab when selecting "User-defined" for the Material model. Note that the fully coupled flow-deformation analysis used in the model requires the PLAXIS Ultimate tier.
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Finite element modelling of unsaturated soils using a modified version of the Barcelona Basic Model [Publications]
Unsaturated soil modelling with Barcelona Basic: using SoilTest [Videos]
Modelling unsaturated soil behaviour with PLAXIS Barcelona Basic model [Coffee Corner webinar]
Plaxis User Defined Soil Models [Models]
How to use a user defined soil model in PLAXIS [Videos]
64 bit User Defined Soil model [Tips and Tricks]