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Liquefaction response of loose gassy marine sand sediments under cyclic loading

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Abstract

Gassy sediments have often been encountered in the marine seabed, and they have different features from common saturated and unsaturated soil. By developing and improving an effective methodology, triaxial gassy sand specimens with different initial gas content (saturation ≥85%) were prepared in the laboratory. Their state parameters can be controlled in real time. A series of undrained dynamic triaxial tests by a Global Digital System (GDS) dynamic testing apparatus were conducted to investigate the liquefaction characteristics of gassy sand sediments. The results show that the gassy sand can liquefy the same as the fully saturated sand, but gas existence monotonically increases the sand liquefaction resistance. The occluded gas bubbles have significant influences on sand liquefaction properties. The dynamic pore pressure of gassy sand shows obvious features of slower accumulation, greater amplitude fluctuation, and deeper groove shape in time history curves of pore water, resulting from the effects of gas compression/expansion, migration, and dissolution/exsolution. By introducing a parameter of saturation, a modified model was proposed to describe the evolution of dynamic pore pressure of gassy sands. It was found that the model parameter θ is linearly dependent on the initial gas content (or initial saturation degree Sr).

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Acknowledgments

The research has been financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51579237 and 51779017), the Foundation of State Key Laboratory for Geomechanics and Deep Underground Engineering (Grant No. SKLGDUEK 1110), the Natural Science Foundation of Zhejiang Province in China (Grant No. LY13E080009), and the Foundation of Changjiang River Scientific Research Institute of China (CKSF2017023/YT). The authors sincerely thank Prof. J. Z. Sun in Wuhan University of Technology and anonymous reviewers for their comments and suggestions to improve the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Yong Wang.

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Wang, Y., Kong, L., Wang, Y. et al. Liquefaction response of loose gassy marine sand sediments under cyclic loading. Bull Eng Geol Environ 77, 963–976 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-017-1164-7

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-017-1164-7

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