Experimental Study on the Influence of Clay Minerals on the Yield Stress of Debris Flows
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 139, Issue 4
Abstract
It is common knowledge that a relationship exists between the volumetric sediment concentration, the percentage of clay mineral content, and the activity of clay minerals (which is related to the clay type) and the yield stress of a debris flow mass. In this paper, the effect of four types of common clay minerals (montmorillonite, illite, chlorite, and kaolin) on the yield stress of mixtures were investigated in a quantitative way. Laboratory experiments were carried out with single and mixed clay mineral types, various volumetric concentrations, and percentages of clay mineral content. For the same clay content and same volumetric concentration, a decreasing effect was found, respectively, of on the yield stress of the flow mixture, whereas the effect of chlorite was equal to that of kaolin. A concept of equivalent clay mineral percentage () is introduced in this paper, in which the value of 1 is taken as the characteristic coefficient of kaolin in the experiments. Compared to kaolin, the coefficients of montmorillonite, illite, and chlorite appeared to be 1.7, 1.3, and 1, respectively. An equation is proposed to calculate the yield stress of debris flows as a function of the volumetric concentration and equivalent clay mineral percentage. The formula is applicable for the calculation of yield stress of single clay and mixed clay type minerals in debris flows. The formula proved to be accurate after validation with data from other studies.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Nature Science Foundation of China (NSFC, contract number: 40871054) and the State Key Laboratory of Geohazard Prevention and Geoenvironment Protection Foundation (contract number: SKLGP2010Z004). The authors would like to thank Dr. Theo van Asch for his help in editing the English of the manuscript.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 139 • Issue 4 • April 2013
Pages: 364 - 373
Copyright
© 2013 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Feb 6, 2012
Accepted: Sep 19, 2012
Published online: Sep 22, 2012
Published in print: Apr 1, 2013
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