Instability of Granular Soils under Strain Path Testing
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 119, Issue 5
Abstract
Recent experimental studies revealed that when the drainage condition of loose sand is switched from drained to undrained it can manifest runaway instability prior to attaining the failure stress state. To study this type of unstable behavior (referred to as prefailure instability) under more‐general conditions, the strain‐path testing technique was used to constrain the strain development of a triaxial sample along a constant strain‐increment‐ratio path. Medium‐loose to dense samples were used in this study. Provided certain conditions are met, prefailure instability can occur even for a dense sample. The factors affecting the occurrence of instability are established from test results. Two instability conditions are established for predicting of instability under a general stress‐controlled condition. These two conditions require input parameters that are relatively simple to obtain yet can accurately predict the occurrence of instability. For the special case of undrained condition, these two instability conditions degenerate to those proposed by previous researchers.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 119 • Issue 5 • May 1993
Pages: 874 - 892
Copyright
Copyright © 1993 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Sep 20, 1991
Published online: May 1, 1993
Published in print: May 1993
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