Responses of frozen, fine-grained soils due to multiple packets of cyclic stress with variable amplitude and an empirical prediction model

Abstract

A suite of stress-controlled cyclic triaxial tests were performed on frozen, fine-grained soils to assess the characteristics of the accumulated and cyclic behaviours under packets of cyclic stress with variable amplitude. The influence of cyclic stress sequences is highlighted, and the results of the variable amplitude cyclic tests indicate that the applied cyclic stress amplitude sequence is of importance regarding the final accumulated deformations. A step change is observed in the accumulated strain when the applied cyclic stress amplitude is beyond that of the previous stress package, while a decreasing level of cyclic stress below the previous loading package results in slight additional strain accumulation. The results of these tests also indicate that the cyclic stiffness is dependent on both the past accumulated strain and the current cyclic stress amplitude. For frozen soil, a higher past accumulated strain and lower cyclic stress levels yield a higher cyclic stiffness. An empirical approach for representing the response of frozen, fine-grained soils under multiple packets of cyclic loading is proposed and then verified by the test data. The results show that the proposed empirical model is able to extract and predict the accumulated and cyclic behaviours under multiple packets of cyclic loading.