The suitable model for soil is depends on the type of soil and type of loading in which the response need to be studied. In general, Drucker - Prager model is effective for simulating sandy soil, Mohr - Coulumb model or Tresca model is suitable for simulating clay soils..ok all the best in your work..
I would suggest that you start using the Mohr Coulomb model, once it is one of the most used model for a non-linear finite element analysis in the geothecnical engineering.
You should probably start with Mohr coulomb model as its widely used and its data is easily available. After that you can proceed with more relevant model based on your study.
But how to neglect the cohesion value because software needs a value of cohesion without cohesion it is not able to adopt mohr coulomb. What about cohesionless soils.?
I would suggest that you use a proper geothecnical FE software. The Optmum Software (https://optumce.com/) provides a student license for those who are enrolled in a university. The rocscience and geostudio softwares are excelente.options as well for finite element analysis in geothecnical engineering.
Thank you for your thought provoking thread, I would like to share my extant knowledge and contribute to ongoing discussion.
First, to model any constitutive relation one needs to know about the stress-strain rate equation which is followed by the material under investigation. To address this issue you need to ascertain and select the most suited constitutive rate equation for your material (i.e. Soil). This can more realistically be determined by regression and correlation analysis of the data obtained from conventional tri-axial and isolated compression tests. You can do it yourself for more appreciable research work or cite data available for the type of soil under consideration from the extensive data in literature available online.
Alternatively, you can use any of the models mentioned in the paper (Lang, et al., 2005) to suit your needs. However, you should evaluate and justify the suitability of each individual models on your own.
Bonus Tip: to model c=0, one can write a few lines of FORTRAN code to model ABAQUS an absolute Cohesion-less soil by writing user material (UMAT) SUBROUTINE (you'll find the input parameters in ABAQUS material >> General>> user material tab) It doesn't take much effort and the process is widely gaining popularity due to it's versatility. I am attaching few references for your consideration. (http://dsk.ippt.pan.pl/docs/abaqus/v6.13/books/sub/default.htm)
Further you can contact Kiel University researcher Dr. Zarghaam Rizvi or read about the work of Prof. Rodrigo Salgado who are an expert in this domain.