Dynamic Behaviors of Overconsolidated Clay under Cyclic Confining Pressure
Publication: International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22, Issue 11
Abstract
Cyclic triaxial tests are commonly used to evaluate the mechanical characteristics of subgrade soil under cyclic loads. Most cyclic triaxial tests were conducted on normally consolidated clays, however, some of the subgrade soils are overconsolidated clays. Moreover, both confining pressure and deviator stress are cyclically varying in the stress field induced by traffic loading. Recognizing that, the mechanical behaviors of overconsolidated clays under cyclic triaxial tests with cyclic confining pressure, are the main focus of the investigation. The impacts of both cyclic confining pressure and overconsolidation ratio (OCR) were investigated. Results show that as both OCR and cyclic confining pressure are increased, the accumulated axial strain decreases to a greater extent. Furthermore, the minimum excess pore water pressure decreases with an increase of OCR, while maximum excess pore water pressure remains approximately constant when the OCR exceeds 2.0. As the cyclic confining pressure is increased, so are the maximum and minimum excess pore water pressures. The variations in hysteresis loops with cyclic confining pressures are negligible, while the influence of OCR is greater. Nevertheless, as both OCR and cyclic confining pressure increase, the damping ratio decreases. Based on that, the variations in normalized damping ratio versus accumulated axial strain can be represented by an empirical formula. The proposed formula is not only suitable for normally consolidated clays, but also for overconsolidated clays in cyclic triaxial tests with cyclic confining pressure.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51909259, and 52079135), and the Youth Innovation Promotion Association CAS (Grant No. 2021325).
Notation
The following symbols are used in this paper:
- a, b
- fitting parameters;
- Aloop
- area of the hysteresis loop, reflects the energy dissipated during one cycle (J/m3);
- CCP tests
- cyclic triaxial tests with constant confining pressure;
- CSR
- cyclic stress ratio;
- D1
- damping ratio at cycle 1;
- DN
- damping ratio at cycles N;
- N
- number of cycles;
- OCR
- overconsolidation ratio;
- pampl
- amplitude of the cyclic mean principle total stress (kPa);
- effective consolidated confining pressure (kPa);
- q
- cyclic deviator stress (kPa);
- qampl
- amplitude of the cyclic deviator stress (kPa);
- umax
- maximum excess pore water pressure (kPa);
- umin
- minimum excess pore water pressure (kPa);
- VCP tests
- cyclic triaxial tests with variable confining pressure;
- ɛp
- accumulated axial strain (%);
- ɛr
- resilient axial strain (%);
- η
- inclination of stress path; and
- amplitude of the cyclic confining pressure (kPa).
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Published In
International Journal of Geomechanics
Volume 22 • Issue 11 • November 2022
Copyright
© 2022 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: May 15, 2021
Accepted: Jun 5, 2022
Published online: Aug 26, 2022
Published in print: Nov 1, 2022
Discussion open until: Jan 26, 2023
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