Technical Papers
Apr 16, 2014

Undrained Behavior of Sand-Fines Mixtures and Their State Parameter

Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140, Issue 7

Abstract

The influence of fines on the undrained behavior of sand was investigated experimentally over a range of fines content and effective mean stress. The role of fines on compressibility and formation of meta-stable soil fabric was analyzed. For a fines content in the range of 5–30%, most of the specimens manifested reverse behavior opposed to the normal behavior of clean sand. The addition of fines led to shifting of both the isotropic consolidation line and the steady-state line, increased compressibility, and occurrence of reverse behavior. All these behavior attributes are linked when the test results are interpreted in the context of the critical-state soil mechanics framework. In particular, reverse behavior is associated with an isotropic consolidation line that locates above the steady-state line. Several quantitative measures for characterizing the undrained deviator stress-strain responses were proposed, and these measures manifested correlation with the state parameter at the start of undrained shearing. These correlations were also tested with two published datasets.

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Acknowledgments

M. M. Rahman acknowledges that the experimental program was conducted during his Ph.D. work at the University of New South Wales, Canberra, Australia, and was published in part in some early publications (Rahman and Lo 2008; Rahman et al. 2008, 2011; Md. Mizanur and Lo 2012). However, most of the analysis and interpretation presented in this paper are new. M. M. Rahman also acknowledges the Australia-India Early Career Fellowship from the Australian Academy of Sciences for their support to revise this document on time.

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Go to Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 140Issue 7July 2014

History

Received: Sep 11, 2012
Accepted: Feb 18, 2014
Published online: Apr 16, 2014
Published in print: Jul 1, 2014
Discussion open until: Sep 16, 2014

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Md. Mizanur Rahman, M.ASCE [email protected]
Senior Lecturer, School of Natural and Built Environments and Barbary Hardy Institute, Univ. of South Australia, Mawson Lakes, SA 5095, Australia (corresponding author). E-mail: [email protected]
Associate Professor, School of Engineering and Information Technology, Univ. of New South Wales, Canberra, BC 2610, Australia. E-mail: [email protected]

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