Experimental Investigations on the Residual Strain Behavior of a Rockfill Material Subjected to Dynamic Loading
Publication: Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29, Issue 5
Abstract
A large-scale triaxial testing apparatus was upgraded by incorporating two pressure stabilization techniques so as to suppress the confining pressure fluctuation in dynamic experiments. Then it was used to study the residual strain behavior of a rockfill material subjected to different initial stress states and dynamic loading. It was found that the strain of the material under dynamic loading can be decomposed into a cyclic part and a residual part. In particular, the residual strains increase rapidly during the first few loading cycles. The strain accumulation rate, however, decreases gradually as the number of cycles increases. To simulate the increase of the residual (plastic) strains with the increasing number of loading cycles, a power function and an exponential function, taking into account the initial stress state, the cyclic shear strain amplitude, and the number of loading cycles, were proposed for the plastic shear strain and the plastic volumetric strain, respectively. The way to use the proposed model in predicting the earthquake-induced permanent deformation of rockfill dams was also explained briefly in the framework of the finite-element method.
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Acknowledgments
This work was supported by National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) (Grant Nos. 51539006 and 51379130). The financial support from Nanjing Hydraulic Research Institute (NHRI) (Grant Nos. Y314011 and Y315005) was also greatly appreciated.
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Published In
Journal of Materials in Civil Engineering
Volume 29 • Issue 5 • May 2017
Copyright
©2016 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Mar 1, 2016
Accepted: Sep 12, 2016
Published online: Nov 17, 2016
Discussion open until: Apr 17, 2017
Published in print: May 1, 2017
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