Undrained Young’s Modulus of Fine-Grained Soils
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Volume 142, Issue 2
Abstract
A reliable estimate of secant undrained Young’s modulus () is necessary to quantify the undrained settlement of structures underlain by fine-grained soils. A large number of triaxial tests have been carried out on eight resedimented clays to establish the effects of soil composition, applied shear stress, overconsolidation, and vertical consolidation stress on the magnitude of . These tests were performed at effective stresses ranging from 0.02 to 100 MPa. Low plasticity soils tend to have a higher compared with high plasticity soils. The effect of composition diminishes as the applied shear stress increases. Overconsolidated (OC) soil has a higher undrained modulus than normally consolidated (NC) soil, though a change in the overconsolidation ratio of OC soil does not have a significant effect on . Regression analyses performed on the experimental data define relationships for as a function of stress level for both NC and OC soil.
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Acknowledgments
This work was funded by the UT GeoFluids Consortium, consisting of Anadarko Petroleum, BP, BHP Billiton, Chevron, ConocoPhillips, ExxonMobil, Hess, Murphy Oil Corporation, Repsol, Schlumberger, Shell, Statoil, and Total. Many results presented in this paper rely on the laboratory work carried out by several graduate students over the past few years. In particular, the authors acknowledge the talented work of John Grennan and Brian Fahy. The authors are also grateful to three anonymous reviewers for their most helpful comments and suggestions.
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Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 142 • Issue 2 • February 2016
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© 2015 American Society of Civil Engineers.
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Received: Nov 24, 2014
Accepted: Jun 4, 2015
Published online: Aug 5, 2015
Discussion open until: Jan 5, 2016
Published in print: Feb 1, 2016
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