Various constitutive formulations have been developed over the years to reproduce the cyclic resistance of sands.
A common challenge for existing models is the accurate simulation of the cyclic strength of sands for a wide
range of initial conditions and different cyclic stress levels when adopting a single calibration. Many liquefaction
models tend to overpredict the resistance of the soil under large-amplitude loading, while underestimating the
strength at low-amplitude cyclic shearing. This manifests itself in slopes of simulated cyclic resistance ratio
curves (CRR-curves) which are steeper than experimental studies indicate. This paper provides a discussion on
the effects of large-amplitude and low-amplitude cyclic shearing on a granular material based on micromechanical and experimental investigations presented in the literature. A constitutive model with a shear-history
threshold is proposed, which accounts for a shift of the apparent angle of phase transformation under cyclic
loading. In addition, a novel expression for a deviatoric fabric tensor is introduced to describe the evolution of
shear-induced fabric anisotropy while a soil is dilating and contracting. Combining these two features in one
formulation within the bounding surface plasticity framework enables an accurate prediction of cyclic strength of
sands under a wide range of cyclic stress ratios.