Some Factors Controlling the Predictability of Stress-Strain Behaviour of Clay

Abstract

A graphical interpolation method which had previously been used for predicting the behaviour of sand in triaxial test conditions has been modified to become applicable to a remoulded saturated clay.The method consists in covering a given region of the principal stress plane by the results of a number of drained compression tests whose stress paths are related to a common consolidation line and are sufficiently close to each other so as to enable intermediate values of different parameters to be found by simple interpolation.The method was applied to a remoulded saturated clay both in normally consolidated and overconsolidated state, and an attempt was made to predict by interpolation the behaviour of the clay in undrained shear and K0-consolidation test respectively.By comparing the predicted behaviour of the clay with that observed in actual tests, a fair agreement was found for undrained tests, whereas for the K0-consolidation test the agreement was poor.It is suggested that the predicting of the behaviour of the clay in a given type of test on the basis of a general picture obtained from a series of tests of a different type is possible provided that in both types of tests the type of consolidation, the sign of the isotropic and deviatoric components of the strain tensor, and the rate of strain are respectively the same.