Experimental Investigation and Three Dimensional Constitutive Modeling of Principal Stress Rotation in Shanghai Soft Clay

Abstract

This paper focuses on the study on the deformation behavior and strength character of natural Shanghai soft clay undergoing principal stress axes rotation. Undrained hollow cylinder shear tests were performed on natural Shanghai soft clay under isotropically and anisotropically consolidated conditions to investigate the effects of principal stress rotation. Effects of coefficient of intermediate principal stress and rotational angle of principal stress axes on the stress-strain behavior and strength characteristics of soft clay were studied. Test results show that the stress-strain behavior and undrained strength characteristics of soft clay vary significantly with the coefficient of intermediate principal stress and rotational angle of principal stress axes. The three-dimensional anisotropic bounding surface model for natural soft clay proposed by the authors is adopted to simulate the behaviors of Shanghai soft clay under principal stress rotation. Comparisons between simulations and experiments are given to further demonstrate the validity of the model.KeywordsRotational AnglePrincipal StressSoft ClayUndrained Shear StrengthIntermediate Principal StressThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.