Effect of Drainage and Loading Conditions on Volumetric Response and Stress-Strain Behavior of Micaceous Sand

Abstract

Mica particle has numerous flakes foliated over each other which cause elastic/resilient nature. The inter-particle contacts between fragile/weak platy mica particle and hard spherical sand particles in micaceous sand would result in complex sand-mica particle assemblies such as bridging, ordering and pore filling. The regular arrangement of sand above mica particle (ordering) and irregular arrangement of sand below mica particle (bridging) would create large void spaces in micaceous sand. The essential problem of micaceous sand is the low shear strength and high resilient nature due to large void spaces, which substantially varies with drainage and loading conditions. The current study investigates the effect of loading (compression & extension) and drainage (undrained & drained) conditions on stress-strain and volumetric response of micaceous sand. The influence of variation in particle arrangement of sand-mica and mica-mica contacts (bridging, ordering & pore filling) and the resilient nature of platy mica particle on shear behavior of micaceous sand were also analyzed under varying boundary conditions. The impact of such influences on shear behavior of micaceous sand was observed to be greater in undrained and compression testing conditions as compared to drained and extension testing conditions respectively.