Importance of considering unsaturated triaxial tests including ceramic disk as initial and boundary value problems

Abstract

Considering unsaturated triaxial tests including a ceramic disk as initial and boundary value problems, a series of suction change, isotropic consolidation, and drained shearing processes was simulated using a soil-water-air coupled elastoplastic finite deformation analysis code. As a result, it was demonstrated that the delayed behavior of a wetting-induced collapse during the suction change and isotropic consolidation processes, as well as water-absorption behavior during the subsequent drained shearing process, were attributed not to the characteristics of the soil specimen, but to the permeability of the disk. Thus, it is important to take the ceramic disk into account in unsaturated triaxial tests regarded as initial and boundary value problems in order to understand the temporal change behavior of unsaturated soil specimens. Otherwise, there is a risk that the behavior appearing as the solution of an initial and boundary value problem may be modeled as a constitutive relation.