Behavior of Liquefied Sands Under Extremely Large Strain Levels in Cyclic Torsional Shear Tests

Abstract

ABSTRACT In order to study the cyclic behavior of liquefied sands at extremely large strain levels up to double amplitude shear strain of about 100%, a series of undrained cyclic torsional shear tests while keeping the specimen height constant was performed on saturated Toyoura sand under different densities, two kinds of in-situ frozen sandy samples and their reconstituted specimens. Due correction was made for the effect of membrane force on the measured shear stress. After exceeding a certain level of overall shear strain, the specimen deformation became non-uniform, which is called as “strain localization” in the present study. The initiation of such localization was associated with the changes in the cyclic amplitude of deviator stress and the increment of shear strain. In the case of Toyoura sand, the limiting value of shear strain to initiate strain localization was found to increase with decrease in the relative density, and such a trend was consistent with the empirical correlation of soil liquefaction when the relative density is higher than 30%. In the case of in-situ frozen sandy samples, their limiting shear strain values were smaller than those of the reconstituted specimens, suggesting that their soil structures were different from each other under different degrees of natural aging effects.