scholarly journals Evaluation of Critical Dynamic Stress and Accumulative Plastic Strain of an Unbound Granular Material Based on Cyclic Triaxial Tests

Materials ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 14 (19) ◽  
pp. 5722
Author(s):  
Qishu Zhang ◽  
Wuming Leng ◽  
Bin Zhai ◽  
Fang Xu ◽  
Junli Dong ◽  
...  

Critical dynamic stress (σcri) and accumulative plastic strain (εp) are primary indicators regarding the dynamic stability of unbound granular materials (UGMs). This study aims to seek an effective method to evaluate the dynamic stability of UGMs used in railway subgrades. First, the dynamic characteristics of an UGM used in railway subgrade bed construction were investigated by performing a series of large-scale cyclic triaxial tests, with the results showing that εp versus cycle number (N) curves can be categorized into stable, failure, and critical patterns. Grey relational analyses were then established, where the analyzed results demonstrated that the εp–N curve pattern and final accumulative plastic strain (εs) of the stable curves are strongly correlated with the moisture content (w), confining pressure (σ3), and dynamic deviator stress (σd). The analyzed grey relational grades distributed in a narrow range of 0.72 to 0.81, indicating that w, σ3, and σd have similar degrees of importance on determining the εp–N curve patterns and the values of εs of the UGM. Finally, a data processing method using a back-propagation (BP) neural network is introduced to analyze the test data, and an empirical approach is developed to evaluate the σcri (considering the effects of σ3 and w) and εs (considering the effects of σ3, w, and σd) of the UGM. The analyzed results illustrated that the developed method can effectively reflect the linear/non-linear relationships of σcri and εs with respect to σ3 and/or σd. The σcri approximately increases linearly with increasing σ3, and a simple empirical formula is proposed for the σcri. In addition, εs and its variation rate increase non-linearly with increasing σd but decrease non-linearly as σ3 increases.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-16
Author(s):  
Fang Xu ◽  
Wuming Leng ◽  
Rusong Nie ◽  
Qishu Zhang ◽  
Qi Yang

A new prestressed reinforcement device (PRD) consisting of two lateral pressure plates (LPPs) and a reinforcement bar is developed to strengthen soil embankments by improving the soil confining pressure and providing lateral constraint on embankment slopes. The reinforcement effects of PRDs were demonstrated by investigating the beneficial effects of increasing confining pressure on the soil behavior via the performance of a series of large-scale static and cyclic triaxial tests on a coarse-grained embankment soil. The results show that PRDs can effectively improve the soil shear strength, bearing capacity, ability to resist elastic and plastic deformation, critical dynamic stress, and dynamic shear modulus, and empirical methods were also developed to determine the critical dynamic stress and initial dynamic shear modulus of the embankment soil. Moreover, 3D finite element analyses (FEAs) with an LPP width of 1.2 m were performed to analyze the additional stress field in a prestressed heavy-haul railway embankment. The FEAs showed that the additional stress at a given external distance from the border of an LPP first increased to a maximum value and then gradually decreased with increasing depth; the additional stress was transferred to the zones where the subgrade tends to have higher stresses with peak stress diffusion angles of 34° (slope direction) and 27° (longitudinal direction); and a continuous effective reinforcement zone with a minimum additional stress coefficient of approximately 0.2 was likely to form at the diffusion surface of the train loads, provided that the net spacing of the LPPs was 0.7 m. The reinforcement zone above the diffusion surface of the train loads can act as a protective layer for the zones that tend to have higher stresses. Finally, the advantages and application prospects of PRDs are discussed in detail. The newly developed PRDs may provide a cost-effective alternative for strengthening soil embankments.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Lina Wang ◽  
Zhiyu Weng ◽  
Tianliang Wang ◽  
Qiang Liu ◽  
Guoyu Li ◽  
...  

In cold regions, the permanent settlement of embankment is mainly caused by the repeated freeze-thaw process and long-term repeated train loads. Meanwhile, the critical dynamic stress (σdcr) is an important parameter index for determining embankment stability. Therefore, the accumulative permanent deformation evolution and critical dynamic stress of embankment soil subjected to cyclic freeze-thaw were studied using dynamic triaxial tests. Firstly, a numerical model for calculating critical dynamic stress considering the repeated freeze-thaw process was proposed, which shows that the critical dynamic stress of embankment soil rapidly decreases in the first two repeated freeze-thaw cycles, whereas it tends to be stable after the subsequent freeze-thaw process. Next, based on the normalization of the critical dynamic stress, an explicit model for predicting accumulative plastic strain (εp) of embankment soil was established. The above model considers freeze-thaw times, repeated dynamic stress amplitude (σd), and loading times, in which all material parameters of Qinghai-Tibet silty clay were presented. Thus, the critical dynamic stress and accumulative plastic strain models established in this paper can be applied to judge the embankment stability and predict the embankment settlement induced by train loads in cold regions.


2021 ◽  
Vol 147 ◽  
pp. 106779
Author(s):  
Zhehao Zhu ◽  
Feng Zhang ◽  
Qingyun Peng ◽  
Jean-Claude Dupla ◽  
Jean Canou ◽  
...  

2009 ◽  
pp. 288-288-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
F Tatsuoka ◽  
S Teachavorasinskun ◽  
J Dong ◽  
Y Kohata ◽  
T Sato

2019 ◽  
Vol 92 ◽  
pp. 08008
Author(s):  
Bozana Bacic ◽  
Ivo Herle

Time-consuming and complicated investigations of soil liquefaction in cyclic triaxial tests are the most common way of laboratory analysis of this phenomenon. Moreover, the necessary equipment for the performance of cyclic triaxial tests is very expensive. Much simpler method for laboratory testing of the soil liquefaction has been developed at the Institute of Geotechnical Engineering at the TU Dresden. This method takes into account the pore water pressure build-up during cyclic shearing within a short time period. During the test, the soil sample is subjected to horizontal cyclic loading and the generated pore water pressure is measured. In the first series of these experiments, a dependence of the pore water pressure buildup on the initial density of soil could be observed, as expected. When comparing different soils, it is shown that the tendency to liquefaction depends also on the granulometric properties (e.g. grain size distribution) of the soil. The aim of the further development is to establish a simple identification test for laboratory testing of the soil liquefaction.


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