Behaviour of a loose silty sand under static and cyclic loading conditions

Abstract

In recent years, considerable progress have been made in the study of liquefaction and flow failures with the introduction of the notion of steady-state of deformation and “collapse” envelope. These concepts are increasingly used in seismic stability analysis of slopes or embankments. However, as most of these studies were carried out on clean sands in the triaxial apparatus, one may question the general applicability of these results to practical conditions as several factors such as anisotropy, fines content, undrained strength anisotropy, boundary deformation conditions, stress history, etc. may play an important role. In this paper, the behaviour of the same soil, a loose silty sand, is compared for different loading and testing conditions: drained and undrained triaxial compression tests, drained and constant volume monotonic and cyclic direct simple shear (DSS) tests. Results allow to identify similarities and differences, in terms of undrained initial and steady-state shear strength and modes of undrained failure between triaxial and DSS test conditions and show that liquefaction in DSS cyclic tests is an instability triggered by shear failure developing once the friction corresponding to the characteristic envelope, as identified in the monotonic test, has been mobilized.