Location

San Diego, California

Presentation Date

29 Mar 2001, 4:00 pm - 6:00 pm

Abstract

Recent development in the application of bender element technique has made it possible to measure Gmax, and K0 of soils under complex anisotropic loading conditions. By measuring the shear wave velocities in different shear planes, the anisotropy in Gmax, of soil induced by anisotropic loading can be determined. The shear wave velocities can also be used to calculate the horizontal earth pressure coefficient at rest K0. This paper reports an experimental setup developed at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, which uses bender elements to measure shear wave velocities in four shear planes in a saturated clay specimen under different consolidation pressure. The data is used to investigate the anisotropy of soil stiffness in clay due to anisotropic stress conditions. The measured Gmax is compared with the calculation by several empirical formulae. The measured Gmax on different shear planes are also used to calculate K. of clay under different consolidation pressure and compared with results of empirical theories. The applied stress condition includes loading, unloading, and reloading of up to 22 cycles, thus allowed us to study the influence of repeated loading on Gmax and K0 of clay. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation.

Department(s)

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering

Meeting Name

4th International Conference on Recent Advances in Geotechnical Earthquake Engineering and Soil Dynamics

Publisher

University of Missouri--Rolla

Document Version

Final Version

Rights

© 2001 University of Missouri--Rolla, All rights reserved.

Creative Commons Licensing

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 License.

Document Type

Article - Conference proceedings

File Type

text

Language

English

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Mar 26th, 12:00 AM Mar 31st, 12:00 AM

Measurement of Gmax and K0 of Saturated Clay Using Bender Elements

San Diego, California

Recent development in the application of bender element technique has made it possible to measure Gmax, and K0 of soils under complex anisotropic loading conditions. By measuring the shear wave velocities in different shear planes, the anisotropy in Gmax, of soil induced by anisotropic loading can be determined. The shear wave velocities can also be used to calculate the horizontal earth pressure coefficient at rest K0. This paper reports an experimental setup developed at the Department of Civil Engineering, University of Kentucky, which uses bender elements to measure shear wave velocities in four shear planes in a saturated clay specimen under different consolidation pressure. The data is used to investigate the anisotropy of soil stiffness in clay due to anisotropic stress conditions. The measured Gmax is compared with the calculation by several empirical formulae. The measured Gmax on different shear planes are also used to calculate K. of clay under different consolidation pressure and compared with results of empirical theories. The applied stress condition includes loading, unloading, and reloading of up to 22 cycles, thus allowed us to study the influence of repeated loading on Gmax and K0 of clay. The study is funded by the National Science Foundation.