ABSTRACT

To discuss the shear behavior of clay under the real element test condition, the authors carried out a conventional drained test and two kinds of drained test simulations for a remolded clay by using the strain path controlled mini-triaxial testing apparatus. In the simulation A, the excess pore pressure was kept zero during compression and in the simulation B, the strain path was controlled along that recorded in the conventional drained test. The drained test simulation A could sustain the uniformity of water content distribution within specimen and the volumetric strain during compression was smaller than that in the conventional drained test, because of the uniform water content distribution. In the simulation B, the negative excess pore pressure appeared during compression because of the over drainage. As a conclusion, the shear behavior of clay under the real element test condition can be investigated by the drained test simulation A.

INTRODUCTION

The uniformityof stress and strain distributions in a triaxial specimen is essential to satisfy the requirements of an element test. However, the requirement is not satisfied in the conventional drained test (Uchida & Vaid, 1994, Matsui et al., 1997). A strain path controlled mini-triaxial test can sustain the uniformity of stress and strain distributions within clay specimen during a compression stage comparing to the conventional drained test, because the volume change is directly controlled along an arbitrary strain path. This suggests that shear behavior of clay under the real element test condition may be investigated by using the strain path controlled test. In this paper, the authors carry out a conventional drained test and two kinds of drained test simulations for a remolded clay by using the strain path controlled mini-triaxial testing apparatus.

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