For many solids, irreversible deformation is often accompanied by changes in the internal structure, impacting the reversible responses, a phenomenon termed elasto-plastic coupling. This coupling has been observed experimentally in various geomaterials, including clayey and sandy soils, as well as hard and soft rocks. Fabric anisotropy, which characterizes the internal structure, is a distinct feature of soils and significantly influences both reversible and irreversible behaviors. In this study, we adopted a coupling formulation based on the framework of anisotropic critical state theory (ACST) to describe the anisotropic elasto-plastic coupling response of soils. The formulation incorporates a deviatoric fabric tensor F, which consistently quantifies the internal structure of soils in both reversible and irreversible range, into a hyperelastic formulation and a plastic model, respectively. A novel evolution rule of F, defined based on the current stress ratio and plastic strain, is proposed, where the direction gradually aligns with the loading direction and the norm achieves different asymptotic values depending on the applied loading paths. This allows for the representation of evolved anisotropy effects on elasticity, dilatancy and strength simultaneously, providing a natural description of elasto-plastic coupling. Within this coupling framework, any anisotropic model within ACST can serve as the plastic platform for developing the elasto-plastic coupling models with anisotropic hyperelasticity. Herein, a bounding surface plastic model is utilized for illustration. The proposed model's performance is demonstrated by especially comparing simulated results to test data on evolving elastic stiffness ratios and overall elastoplastic responses under varying monotonic and cyclic loading conditions.

Earthquakes contribute to the failure of anti-dip bedding rock slopes (ABRSs) in seismically active regions. The pseudo-static method is commonly employed to assess the ABRSs stability. However, simplifying seismic effects as static loads often underestimates rock slope stability. The development of a practical stability analysis approach for ABRSs, particularly in slope engineering design, is imperative. This study proposes a stability evaluation model for ABRSs, incorporating the viscoelastic properties of rock, to quantitatively assess the safety factor and failure surface under seismic conditions. The mathematical description of the pseudo-dynamic method, derived in this study, accounts for the viscoelastic properties of ABRSs and integrates the Hoek-Brown failure criterion with the Kelvin-Voigt stress-strain relationship of rocks. Furthermore, to address concurrent translation-rotation failure in ABRSs, upper bound limit analysis is utilized to quantify the safety factor. Through a comparison with existing literature, the proposed method considers the effect of harmonic vibration on the stability of ABRSs. The obtained safety factor is lower than that of the quasi-static method, with the resulting percentage change exceeding 5%. The critical failure surface demonstrates superior positional accuracy compared to the Aydan and Adhikary basal planes, with minimal error observed between the physical model test and the numerical simulation test. The parameter sensitivity analysis reveals that the inclination of ABRSs exhibits the highest sensitivity (Sk) value across the three levels of horizontal seismic coefficient (kh). The study aims to devise an expeditious calculation approach for assessing the stability of ABRSs during seismic events, intending to offer theoretical guidance for their stability analysis. (c) 2025 Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).