A Method to Estimate Dynamic Pore Water Pressure Growth of Saturated Sand-Gravel Materials

Abstract

The liquefaction of saturated sand-gravel material samples from the Xinjiang valley were investigated under cyclic loading. A series of large-scale dynamic triaxial tests were used to determine the dynamic characteristics of the sand-gravel sample under different confining pressures, consolidation stress ratios, and stress levels. A suitable pore water pressure growth model is proposed for the sand-gravel and sand materials. The number of cycles required to cause liquefaction was an important parameter in the dynamic pore water pressure growth model. A method to determine the number of cycles was proposed and verified by a large number of experimental data. The presentation of the pore water pressure simulation results demonstrates that the proposed pore water pressure growth model accurately characterizes the dynamic pore water pressure development in sand-gravel under cyclic loading and is also applicable to sand. The proposed pore water pressure growth model can be used to study the anti-liquefaction characteristics of foundation and dam materials of high earth-rock dams and high sand-gravel dams on deep overburdens.

Keywords

• large-scale dynamic triaxial test
• liquefaction
• pore water pressure estimation method
• number of cycles model