Search

The empirical expressions for predicting the small-strain shear modulus (G0) of granular soils in current engineering practice are established mainly on experimental data under isotropic stress conditions. In most geotechnical applications, however, soils are subjected to anisotropic stress conditions. The impact of stress anisotropy on G0 is a critical concern but is not yet fully understood. In this paper, we present a specifically designed experimental study to address the question. Various principal stress ratios were applied to isotropically consolidated sand specimens in a triaxial apparatus, and the elastic shear waves were generated by the bender elements installed in the apparatus such that the variations of G0 from isotropic stress states to anisotropic stress states were determined. Three quartz sands with different particle shapes were tested under a range of states in terms of void ratio, axial stress, and radial stress. The study shows that the impact of stress anisotropy is much more complicated than commonly thought. It depends on the magnitude of the stress ratio and the loading mode. A simple model that accounts for two primary mechanisms associated with the impact of stress anisotropy is proposed, and its performance is evaluated using various sources of data in the literature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Establishing the influence of sample preparation method on shear wave velocity or associated small-strain shear modulus (G0) of silty sands is a subject of considerable interest. This paper presents an attempt to address this topic through a comprehensive experimental programme covering four sample preparation methods. The experiments were conducted on clean Toyoura sand and its mixtures with two types of fines of different sizes. For each sample preparation method, a range of void ratio and confining stress was investigated to obtain a comprehensive view of the influence of sample preparation and its interplay with other factors. One of the notable findings is that, compared with clean sand, the difference of G0 induced by different sample reconstitution methods can be much enlarged for silty sand, and the influence is coupled with the size disparity ratio of the mixtures. The reduction of G0 due to the presence of fines also depends on sample preparation method and for smaller fines the reduction is more significant. A careful examination of the X-ray images of the specimens made by different methods suggests that the observed effects are mainly associated with the different contact conditions of coarse and fine grains. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]