Abstract
The soil small strain stiffness plays an important role in many geotechnical applications such as machine foundations, deep excavations and earthquake ground response analysis. In this study, the small strain stiffness of saturated intact Shanghai clay specimen is measured in a hollow cylinder apparatus. The lateral earth pressure coefficient at rest is measured first during the one-dimensional consolidation. After consolidation, the very small strain stiffness is obtained by shear wave measurement using bender elements, while the degradation of small strain stiffness with strain is investigated by quasi-static loading with high resolution linear variable displacement transducers (LVDT). The effect of stress path on the small strain stiffness is also investigated. The results show that the small strain stiffness is nonlinear and significantly depends on the stress path.
Highlights
The design of many geotechnical projects are controlled by the serviceability rather than stability requirement, and the prediction and control of deformation becomes crucial, especially in developed urban area such as Shanghai
The small strain stiffness of saturated intact Shanghai clay specimen is measured in a hollow cylinder apparatus
The very small strain stiffness is obtained by shear wave measurement using bender elements, while the degradation of small strain stiffness with strain is investigated by quasi-static loading with high resolution linear variable displacement transducers (LVDT)
Summary
The design of many geotechnical projects are controlled by the serviceability (i.e. deformation) rather than stability (i.e. strength) requirement, and the prediction and control of deformation becomes crucial, especially in developed urban area such as Shanghai. The piezo bender elements for shear wave velocity measurement have been widely implanted in many laboratory apparatus (e.g. triaxial [7], resonant column [8] and oedometer [9]) and it generally becomes a routine test to determine the G0 of the sample. The shear wave measurements in different planes indicate that the small strain stiffness is anisotropic due to anisotropic stress state and anisotropic fabric. The modulus reduction curve of soil in monotonic loading is usually measured by undrained triaxial test with local strain measurements using liner variable displacement transducer (LVDT) with high resolution [11-12]. The difference of the modulus reduction curves obtained from resonant column and monotonic triaxial tests has not been well studied. The K0 consolidated specimen is sheared along different stress paths and the small strain is measured by local LVDT. Based on the measured stress-strain curve, the equivalent secant Young’s modulus and shear modulus can be calculated
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