Consolidation Behavior for Saturated Sand–Marine Clay Mixtures Considering the Intergranular Structure Evolution
Publication: Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 144, Issue 2
Abstract
Laboratory tests on sand–marine clay mixtures reveal that the effect of sand mass fraction on the overall consolidation behavior is negligible for a sand mass fraction of 20% or less. Further increase of the sand fraction significantly affects the overall consolidation process. To describe this behavior, a consolidation model is proposed within a homogenization framework. The sand–marine clay mixture is divided into two systems: a clay matrix system consisting of the silts, clay particles, and void space in the marine clay matrix; and an inclusion system consisting of sand particles. The volume fraction of sand particles is adopted as the structure variable, representing the intergranular structure evolution of the sand-clay mixtures. Based on some reasonable assumptions, the governing equations are formulated and the consolidation problem is solved using Galerkin’s weighted residual method within the finite-element framework. The proposed consolidation model has five principal parameters: four intrinsic ones depending on the behavior of the pure clay matrix and one structure parameter related to the intergranular structure. Only two conventional oedometer tests are needed for the calibration of these model parameters. Comparison between the test data and the model prediction reveals that the model can well reproduce the effect of sand fraction on the overall consolidation behavior of the tested sand–marine clay mixtures.
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Acknowledgments
The work in this paper is supported by a National State Key Project “973” grant (Grant No. 2014CB047000) (sub-project No. 2014CB047001) from Ministry of Science and Technology of the People’s Republic of China, a CRF project (Grant No. PolyU12/CRF/13E) from Research Grants Council (RGC) of Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Government of China. The authors acknowledge also the financial supports from Research Institute for Sustainable Urban Development of Hong Kong Polytechnic University.
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Published In
Journal of Engineering Mechanics
Volume 144 • Issue 2 • February 2018
Copyright
©2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 26, 2017
Accepted: Jul 20, 2017
Published online: Nov 29, 2017
Published in print: Feb 1, 2018
Discussion open until: Apr 29, 2018
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