With the development of offshore engineering in recent years

foundation stability in ocean environment has become a hot topic for scholars and engineers. It is important to set up a simple saturated clay cyclic model for design of offshore structures under long-term cyclic loading. According to cyclic degradation behavior of saturated clay

a simple nonlinear model considering cyclic degradation of saturated clay is developed based on Hardin-Drnevich equivalent nonlinear model. This model can be adopted to describe the cyclic hysteretic characteristic of saturated clay

in which a degradation law for strength and stiffness with accumulated plastic strain as a variable is introduced. The physical interpretations of shape parameters and n

as well as residual ratio and damping factor are illustrated through parameter analysis. This model is proved to be able to describe the stress-strain hysteresis loops of different shapes and different degradation laws for strength and stiffness of saturated clay well by simulating the results of one-way cyclic triaxial tests and two-way cyclic triaxial tests in the literatures. With higher calculation efficiency

this simple model will be more suitable for engineering application comparing with the traditional elastoplastic models of soils.