A simple triaxial system for evaluating the performance of unsaturated soils under repeated loading

R. Thom, V. Sivakumar, J. L. Brown, D. Hughes

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    21 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Unsaturated soils constitute a large proportion of the foundation materials supporting infrastructure throughout the world and they are subject to various loading conditions. This paper describes the development of a simple system for testing unsaturated soils under repeated loading. The equipment was comprised of a modified triaxial cell with hydraulic loading system, hall-effect transducers for on-sample strain measurements, and thermocouple psychrometer for suction measurements. A number of undrained monotonic and repeated loading triaxial tests were performed on compacted samples of kaolin clay in order to attest the newly developed system. The results yielded some useful information on the resilient modulus and permanent deformation of a soil when subjected to repeated loading. There is some difference between the failure deviator stress of samples subjected to repeated and monotonic loading, though repeated loading continued to result in a significant permanent deformation. This paper is aimed at demonstrating the key features of the equipment using preliminary data generated as part of the on-going research.
    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)107-114
    JournalGeotechnical Testing Journal
    Volume31
    Issue number2
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished (in print/issue) - 2008

    Keywords

    • Unsaturated soils
    • repeated loading
    • triaxial test

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