Reply to the discussion by A. Eliadorani and Y.P. Vaid on "Effect of undrained creep on instability behaviour of loose sand"

Abstract

The discussers stated that the definition used in the note is “misleading.” According to the Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, the word “misleading” means “giving the wrong idea or impression and make them believe something that is not true.” The definition of instability is clearly defined and used consistently in the note. Therefore, we fail to see in which way it is “misleading.” If the discussers’ disagreement is on the term “undrained creep” or whether the instability should be called creep induced instability, we have explained in the note that the same term has been used and similar behaviour has been studied by Arulanandan et al. (1971) and Sheahan (1995) before for other types of soil. The discussers also stated “drained perturbation will not cause instability” and “there is only one instability line.” This may not be generally true, as it has been observed by a number of researchers (Eckersley 1990; Sasitharan et al. 1993; Chu et al. 2000, 2003b) that instability can occur under drained conditions and the instability line is not unique, but affected by many factors (Imam et al. 2002; Yang 2002). Creep is one of the factors and is studied in this note. The influence of void ratio on the instability line is also illustrated in Fig. 3 of the discussed note.