scholarly journals Determination of the Effect of Soil Particle Size Distribution on the Shear Behavior of Sand

2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 125
Author(s):  
Mohammad Afrazi ◽  
Mahmoud Yazdani

Many geotechnical problems require the determination of soil engineering properties such as shear strength. Therefore, the determination of the reliable values for this parameter is essential. For this purpose, the direct shear test, as one of the oldest tests to examine the shear strength of soils, is the most common way in laboratories to determine the shear parameters of soil. There are far too many variables that influence the results of a direct shear test. In this paper, a series of 10 × 10 cm direct shear tests were carried out on four different poorly graded sands with different particle size distributions to determine their shear behaviors. Four different poorly graded sands with a different median diameter or medium value of particle size distribution (D50) (0.2, 0.53, 1.3, and 2.3 mm) has been selected, and about 40 direct shear tests were conducted. It was concluded that a soil’s friction angle is affected by coarse-grained material. Accordingly, sandy soils with bigger particle sizes record a higher friction angle than soils containing small particles. The investigations also showed that sand with bigger particle sizes has a higher dilation angle. In addition, a non-linear regression analysis was performed to establish the exact relationship between the friction angle of the soil and the characteristics of the soil particles. This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium provided the original work is properly cited.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-7 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yanhui Cheng ◽  
Weijun Yang ◽  
Dongliang He

Structural plane is a key factor in controlling the stability of rock mass engineering. To study the influence of structural plane microscopic parameters on direct shear strength, this paper established the direct shear mechanical model of the structural plane by using the discrete element code PFC2D. From the mesoscopic perspective, the research on the direct shear test for structural plane has been conducted. The bonding strength and friction coefficient of the structural plane are investigated, and the effect of mesoscopic parameters on the shear mechanical behavior of the structural plane has been analyzed. The results show that the internal friction angle φ of the structural plane decreases with the increase of particle contact stiffness ratio. However, the change range of cohesion is small. The internal friction angle decreases first and then increases with the increase of parallel bond stiffness ratio. The influence of particle contact modulus EC on cohesion c is relatively small. The internal friction angle obtained by the direct shear test is larger than that obtained by the triaxial compression test. Parallel bond elastic modulus has a stronger impact on friction angle φ than that on cohesion c. Under the same normal stress conditions, the shear strength of the specimens increases with particle size. The shear strength of the specimen gradually decreases with the increase of the particle size ratio.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Ping Jiang ◽  
Jian Qian ◽  
Na Li

The resource utilization of iron tailings is of great significance for all countries in the world. Considering the particle composition and physicochemical characteristics of iron tailings, fiber and lime were used to modify iron tailings. The fiber content was 0%, 0.25%, 0.5%, 0.75%, and 1%, and the lime content was 0%, 2%, 4%, 8%, and 10%, respectively. Through a direct shear test, the shear stress displacement (τ-δ) curves and shear strength of modified iron tailings, under the action of a 0 freeze-thaw cycle and 1 freeze-thaw cycle, were tested. As statistics have shown that there are uncertainty factors associated with direct shear tests, the shear strength index cohesion c and internal friction angle φ of the modified iron tailings were analyzed using the Monte Carlo method. The results show that the τ-δ curve of the fiber-modified iron tailings is a hardening-type curve and that of the lime-modified iron tailings is a softening-type curve. In the direct shear tests, the main uncertain factors are the specimen diameter, vertical force, and horizontal force. The diameter of the sample obeys a normal distribution, and the vertical and horizontal forces obey a uniform distribution. The results of the Monte Carlo simulation show that both c and φ obey a normal distribution. Under a 95% confidence condition, the effect of fiber on the cohesion on iron tailings is obvious, but the effect on the internal friction angle is not obvious. However, the values of c and φ of the iron tailings are clearly improved by lime. Additionally, the iron tailings modified by a fiber content of 1% and those modified by a lime content of 8% have the best frost resistance.


2013 ◽  
Vol 3 (4) ◽  
pp. 497-501 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. Mostefa Kara ◽  
M. Meghachou ◽  
N. Aboubekr

This work studies the correlation between certain physical properties of granular material such as the friction angle and the grain size distribution. In the laboratory, the determination of friction angle requires hard and expensive testing. Prediction of this parameter from the grading curve proves to be very interesting. Direct shear tests were performed on actual marine sand of Tergha (Algeria) and on seventeen different samples arranged from the same sand with various particle size ranges. Results showed that the friction angle of sand is a result of contribution of various constituent granular classes.


2017 ◽  
Vol 21 (4) ◽  
pp. 183-188
Author(s):  
Peng He ◽  
Liuying Sun ◽  
Zhen Wang

The present study focuses on some tentative laboratory tests using a newly-constructed modified direct shear test apparatus. The single-stage and multistage direct shear tests were performed to determine the shear rate and test scheme of unsaturated shear test. Shear strength parameters of unsaturated soil in different conditions are obtained and the tests indicate good agreement with typical theories of unsaturated soil, the nonlinear matric suction failure envelope is determined. Some shear strength equations are also fitted through the experimental results. 


CivilEng ◽  
2022 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-50
Author(s):  
Akram Deiminiat ◽  
Li Li

The determination of shear strength parameters for coarse granular materials such as rockfill and waste rocks is challenging due to their oversized particles and the minimum required ratio of 10 between the specimen width (W) and the maximum particle size (dmax) of tested samples for direct shear tests. To overcome this problem, a common practice is to prepare test samples by excluding the oversized particles. This method is called the scalping scaling down technique. Making further modifications on scalped samples to achieve a specific particle size distribution curve (PSDC) leads to other scaling down techniques. Until now, the parallel scaling down technique has been the most popular and most commonly applied, generally because it produces a PSDC parallel and similar to that of field material. Recently, a critical literature review performed by the authors revealed that the methodology used by previous researchers to validate or invalidate the scaling down techniques in estimating the shear strength of field materials is inappropriate. The validity of scaling down techniques remains unknown. In addition, the minimum required W/dmax ratio of 10, stipulated in ASTM D3080/D3080M-11 for direct shear tests, is not large enough to eliminate the specimen size effect (SSE). The authors’ recent experimental study showed that a minimum W/dmax ratio of 60 is necessary to avoid any SSE in direct shear tests. In this study, a series of direct shear tests were performed on samples with different dmax values, prepared by applying scalping and parallel scaling down techniques. All tested specimens had a W/dmax ratio equal to or larger than 60. The test results of the scaled down samples with dmax values smaller than those of field samples were used to establish a predictive equation between the effective internal friction angle (hereafter named “friction angle”) and dmax, which was then used to predict the friction angles of the field samples. Comparisons between the measured and predicted friction angles of field samples demonstrated that the equations based on scalping scaling down technique correctly predicted the friction angles of field samples, whereas the equations based on parallel scaling down technique failed to correctly predict the friction angles of field samples. The scalping down technique has been validated, whereas the parallel scaling down technique has been invalidated by the experimental results presented in this study.


Geofluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Ruiqian Wu ◽  
Youzhi Tang ◽  
Shaohe Li ◽  
Wei Wang ◽  
Ping Jiang ◽  
...  

In order to probe into one simplified method to predict the shear strength of Shaoxing unsaturated silty clay, the test method combining unsaturated soil consolidation instrument and conventional direct shear instrument is used to study the shear strength, and the method is compared and verified with the results of equal suction direct shear test. The research results show that the soil water characteristic curve fitted by the measured data points and VG model has obvious stage characteristics in the range of 0~38 kPa, 38~910 kPa, and 910~10000 kPa. The shear strength of unsaturated soil measured by consolidation meter combined with conventional direct shear test is in good agreement with that measured by equal suction direct shear test in the range of 0~500 kPa. The results show that the shear strength, total cohesion, and effective internal friction angle of soil increase slightly with the increase of matric suction in the range of 0~38 kPa. When the matric suction increases from 38 kPa to 500 kPa, the shear strength and total cohesion force of the soil have similar stage characteristics with the SWCC, which first increases and then tends to be stable, while the effective internal friction angle changes slightly. Finally, taking the air-entry value as the demarcation point, an improved model of unsaturated shear strength is proposed by analyzing the error value. Compared with the measured value, the absolute value of relative error is basically kept in the range of 5%~10%, which is close to the measured value.


2011 ◽  
Vol 368-373 ◽  
pp. 3230-3235
Author(s):  
Zhao Yun Xiao ◽  
Wei Xu ◽  
Yan Sheng Deng ◽  
Fan Tu

The interface of non-woven geotextile and HDPE geomembrane based on direct shear test has an obvious softening behavior. This paper adopts displacement-softening model that proposed by Esterhuizen and conducts secondary development by using ABAQUS and its embedded FRIC subroutine, making further efforts to conduct numerical simulation of interface of non-woven geotextile and HDPE geomembrane based on large-size direct shear tests. Results show that the developed interface friction model can simulate the characteristics of interface softening of certain materials better, thus providing a method when study the interface softening characteristic of materials.


1988 ◽  
Vol 25 (3) ◽  
pp. 500-510 ◽  
Author(s):  
J. K. M. Gan ◽  
D. G. Fredlund ◽  
H. Rahardjo

Multistage direct shear tests have been performed on saturated and unsaturated specimens of a compacted glacial till. A conventional direct shear apparatus was modified in order to use the axis-translation technique for direct shear tests on unsaturated soils. The soil can be subjected to a wide range of matric suctions. The testing procedure and some typical results are presented. Nonlinearity in the failure envelope with respect to matric suction was observed. Suggestions are made as to how best to handle the nonlinearity from a practical engineering standpoint. Key words: shear strength, unsaturated soils, negative pore-water pressures, soil suction, direct shear.


2019 ◽  
Vol 56 (2) ◽  
pp. 208-227 ◽  
Author(s):  
Samaneh Amirpour Harehdasht ◽  
Mahmoud N. Hussien ◽  
Mourad Karray ◽  
Varvara Roubtsova ◽  
Mohamed Chekired

Upon close scrutiny of data reported in the literature, taking into account particle-scale characteristics to optimize the precision of the well-known empirical Bolton’s equations and imposing particle-size limits on them is recommended. The present paper examines the potential influence of particle size and grading on the shear strength–dilation relation of granular materials from the results of 276 symmetrical direct shear tests. The applicability of physical symmetrical direct shear tests to interpret the plane strain frictional shearing resistance of granular materials has been widely discussed using the discrete element method (DEM) computer code SiGran. Sixteen different grain-size distribution curves of three different materials were tested at different normal pressures and initial relative densities. It is demonstrated that while the contribution of dilatancy to shear strength is not influenced by the variation in the coefficient of uniformity, Cu, in the investigated range, it significantly decreases with increasing mean particle size, D50. The coefficients of Bolton’s equations have been, therefore, adjusted to account for D50. A comparison of the predictions by the proposed empirical formulas with plane strain friction angle, [Formula: see text], and dilation angle, ψ, data from the literature shows that accounting for the grain size yields more accurate results.


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