| Issue |
E3S Web of Conf.
Volume 382, 2023
8th International Conference on Unsaturated Soils (UNSAT 2023)
|
|
|---|---|---|
| Article Number | 04001 | |
| Number of page(s) | 6 | |
| Section | Fundamental Soil Behavior - Part II | |
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1051/e3sconf/202338204001 | |
| Published online | 24 April 2023 | |
The combination of splitting tensile strength and unconfined compression tests on unsaturated soils to measure the evolution of unsaturated shear strength
EDAFOS Engineering Consultants S.A., Laboratory, 2 Therapion st., 10444 Athens, Greece
* Corresponding author: mbardanis@edafos.gr
The paper presents experimental results from unconfined compression and splitting tensile tests used in combination in order to estimate the cohesion intercept of unsaturated soils. Samples of different soils in the form of slurry were subjected to various suction values using the axis translation technique in a pressure plate extractor and then these samples were removed and subjected to unconfined compression and splitting tensile tests. Mohr’ circles for the two loading conditions were drawn and the tangents plotted in order to obtain the cohesion intercept for each soil and each suction. Cohesion intercept was then plotted against suction for each soil and the angle of shear strength increase due to suction increase was estimated and compared to the value of the angle of shearing resistance of the fully saturated soil. The method allowed insight into the evolution of unsaturated soil shear strength of slurried fine-grained soils, and seems to be an interesting low-cost alternative compared to established controlled suction methods to estimate unsaturated shear strength, yet it is based on two assumptions: first that the failure envelope is linear in the range between zero vertical stress and the stress corresponding to unconfined compression loading, and second that the suction applied to the samples does not change significantly from the moment a sample is removed from the pressure plate extractor until it is subjected to loading. The former assumption seems a fair one given the range of stress involved; the latter was investigated by conducting an unconfined compression test with suction measurement during loading. This test indicated that the latter assumption is a fair one too. Furthermore, results of the angle of strength increase relative to suction φb were normalised by the angle of shearing resistance of each soil indicating that a reasonable relation for the evolution of φb seems valid.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2023
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
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