Influence of Grain Gradation on Permanent Strain of Unbound Granular Materials under Low Confining Pressure and High-Cycle Loading
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18, Issue 3
Abstract
Unbound granular materials (UGMs) are widely used as road-base and subbase materials for bearing traffic loading. Significant road settlements can be caused by cyclic traffic loading after several years of operation. To investigate the settlements of base and subbase induced by traffic loading, a series of large-scale cyclic triaxial tests were conducted under low-amplitude and high-cycle loading. Special attention was paid to the effects of the grain gradation on the strain accumulation of UGMs under cyclic loading. Test results showed that the gradation had a considerable effect on the accumulated deformation of UGMs under various cyclic loadings. Based on the experimental results, an improved high-cycle accumulation (HCA) model, incorporating a new function to consider the influence of grain gradation, was proposed. Good agreement was observed between the results predicted by the improved HCA model and the validation-test results.
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Acknowledgments
The authors acknowledge the support of the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2016YFC0800204), the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grants 51238009, 51278383, 11372274, 51578500, 51578426), Program of International Science and Technology cooperation (Grant 2015DFA71550), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province (LY15E080009), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (2015QNA4024).
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 18 • Issue 3 • March 2018
Copyright
© 2017 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jun 16, 2016
Accepted: Aug 7, 2017
Published online: Dec 18, 2017
Published in print: Mar 1, 2018
Discussion open until: May 18, 2018
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