Experimental Study on Shear Strength Considering Initial Void Ratio and Plasticity Index

Abstract

A series of drained triaxial compression tests under different conditions were performed to quantitatively study the influence of the initial void ratio and plasticity index on the shear strength of remolded saturated clays. The test results show that both the peak stress friction angle and peak deviatoric stress decrease with increasing initial void ratio and plasticity index of the soil under the same confining pressure; whereas, they increase with increasing confining pressure of the soil under the same initial void ratio and plasticity index. A new synthesized physical parameter λ, which simultaneously represent both the type and the condition of remolded saturated clays, is defined based on the test results in this work. The functional relationships among the parameters φd and peak deviatoric stress in Mohr-Coulomb equation and the parameter λ are established to develop a modified Mohr-Coulomb equation by considering physical properties of soil. In this equation, only two input parameters, i.e., λ and the confine pressure, are needed to predict the shear strength of the soil. In order to check the accuracy of the proposed equation, laboratory tests were conducted to evaluate against the predicted results. The results show that the peak shear strength of remolded saturated clays can be well described by the proposed equation. Key words: shear strength; Mohr-Coulomb equation; remolded saturated clays; initial void ratio; plasticity index.