Determination of the effective stress parameter

2010 ◽  
pp. 901-905
Author(s):  
E Nikooee ◽  
G Habibagahi ◽  
A Ghahramani
2015 ◽  
Vol 52 (12) ◽  
pp. 2067-2076 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jean-Marie Konrad ◽  
Marc Lebeau

A number of investigations have shown that the shear strength of unsaturated soils can be defined in terms of effective stress. The difficulty in this approach lies in quantifying the effective stress parameter, or Bishop’s parameter. Although often set equal to the degree of saturation, it has recently been suggested that the effective stress parameter should be related to an effective degree of saturation, which defines the fraction of water that contributes to soil strength. A problematic element in this approach resides in differentiating the water that contributes to soil strength from that which does not contribute to soil strength. To address this difficulty, the paper uses theoretical considerations and experimental observations to partition the water retention function into capillary and adsorptive components. Given that the thin liquid films of adsorbed water should not contribute to effective stress, the effective stress parameter is solely related to the capillary component of water retention. In sample calculations, this alternative effective stress parameter provided very good agreement with experimental data of shear strength for a variety of soil types.


Author(s):  
Mehrdad Kholghifard

Naturally, soil moisture reduces during dry seasons when the soil is in drying state; while it increases during wet seasons when the soil is in wetting state. Previous studies have shown that for an unsaturated soil sample, soil-water characteristic curves (SWCCs) do not match in wetting and drying paths. The differences between wetting and drying paths are called the hydraulic hysteresis. The hydraulic hysteresis plays an important role in mechanical properties of soil such as shear strength, volume change, and settlement. The objective of this research is to study the effects of drying and wetting on the effective stress and compressibility of unsaturated clayey fine-grained soils. To this end, saturated and unsaturated triaxial tests were performed on the soil samples under various normal mean stresses, and matrix suctions in drying and wetting paths. It was found that soil samples bear higher levels of effective stress in the drying path than the wetting path under a same level of suction. The attained values of effective stress parameter (χ) showed that the Bishop’s effective stress parameter (χ = Sr) is not properly applicable for the clayey soil. Moreover, the resulting loading-collapse curve (LC) revealed that the effective pre-consolidation pressure in the drying and wetting stages changed even with same degrees of matrix suction.


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