Study on GMZ bentonite-sand mixture by undrained triaxial tests

¹ Civil Engineering Department, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China
² State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
³ College of civil engineering＆architecture, China Three Gorges University, Yichang, 443002, China
⁴ Centre for Built Infrastructure Research, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Faculty of Engineering and IT, University of Technology, Sydney, 15 Broadway, Ultimo, NSW2007, Australia

^a Corresponding author: wjsun@shu.edu.cn

Abstract

It is particularly necessary to study the deformation, strength and the changes of pore water pressure of bentonite-based buffer/backfill materials under the undrained condition. A series of isotropic compression tests and triaxial shear tests under undrained conditions were conducted on the compacted saturated/unsaturated GMZ bentonite-sand mixtures with dry mass ratio of bentonite/sand of 30:70. During the tests, the images of the sample were collected by photographic equipment and subsequently were cropped, binarized and centroids marked by image processing technique. Based on identification of the variation of the position of marked centroids, the deformation of the sample can be determined automatically in real-time. Finally, the hydro-mechanical behaviour of saturated and unsaturated bentonite-sand mixtures under the undrained condition can be obtained. From results of triaxial shear tests on unsaturated samples under constant water content, inflated volumetric deformation transforms to contractive volumetric deformation due to the increase of the confining pressure and lateral expansion deformation are observed due to the increase in the shearing stress. Moreover, the net mean stress affects the initial stiffness, undrained shear strength and deformation of the sample during the undrained shear tests.