Influence of Shear Rate on Undrained Vane Shear Strength of Organic Harbor Mud
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 10
Abstract
Dredging operations in European harbors for maintenance of navigable water depth produce vast amounts of harbor mud. Between 2005 and 2007, the second largest harbor construction project in Germany was designed as a pilot study to use dredged harbor mud as backfill material to avoid expensive disposal or ex situ treatment. During this project, a partial collapse of the backfill highlighted the need for an improved assessment of undrained shear strength of naturally occurring liquid harbor mud. Using vane shear testing, this study evaluates the effect of shear rate on the undrained shear strength of harbor mud. It is shown that measured values for both peak and residual shear strength are significantly influenced by shear rate effects. Furthermore, the influence of shear rate on the peak shear strength is found to be independent of water content while the influence of the shear rate on the residual shear strength strongly depends on water content. New shear rate dependent correction factors are proposed using the test results and the observed time to failure in the harbor basin. The proposed correction leads to significant lower design undrained shear strengths than the classical Bjerrum correction and would have predicted the failure during the construction.
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Acknowledgments
This study was funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) as a part of the DFG-Research Center MARUM at the University of Bremen. We express our sincere thanks to Bernd Grupe from the Technical University of Berlin who provided the vane shear test apparatus and Richard G. Ellis from Brown University for proofreading. Our special thanks go to our industry cooperating partners Christoph Tarras from bremenports GmbH and Co. KG, Bremerhaven as well as Dirk Lesemann, Kai Petereit and Michael Lux from PHW Hamburg for providing the sample material and field data as well as their general support and access.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 10 • October 2010
Pages: 1437 - 1447
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: Feb 28, 2008
Accepted: Mar 17, 2010
Published online: Mar 19, 2010
Published in print: Oct 2010
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