Effects of Anisotropic Consolidation and Initial Shear Load on Liquefaction Resistance of Sand in Simple Shear Condition

Abstract

Undrained triaxial test is commonly used in laboratory for evaluating liquefaction resistance of sand. The principal stress components are fixed vertical and horizontal in triaxial tests, thus it is impossible to examine the effects of initial consolidation stress ratio (Kc = σh / σv) and initial stress ratio (α = τ/σv) independently. This study utilized hollow cylindrical specimen and mutual effects of these two stress conditions are researched in detail. The outer and inner diameter of the hollow specimens were maintained constant during undrained cyclic loading to realize exact simple shear condition. It was found that the liquefaction resistance ratio to the initial vertical stress increased with increasing consolidation stress ratio (K c ) and initial stress ratio (α). It was also shown that the effect of initial stress ratio (α) was smaller for larger initial consolidation stress ratio (K c ).