Abstract
The Iowa Borehole Shear Test (BST) is an in situ device to rapidly determine a Mohr-Coulomb failure envelope in a borehole. Under the right conditions in clayey soils, the failure envelope from the BST may yield a friction angle and cohesion intercept in agreement with effective stress strength parameters determined from laboratory tests. Generally, this occurs when the in situ soil is in a nearly saturated condition and where shear-induced excess pore pressures are minimal, such as for stiff clays. For unsaturated soils, the interpretation of BST results is complicated by the presence of, and unknown variations in, soil suction during the test. This paper presents and discusses the results of BSTs and corresponding suction determinations in unsaturated clayey soils at two test sites. Results indicate that soil suction, in addition to other test variables, has a strong influence on failure envelope. Range of normal stress used in the test was also observed to have a strong influence on the resulting Mohr-Coulomb failure envelopes.
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© 2012 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg
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Miller, G.A., Khoury, C.N. (2012). Observations from Borehole Shear Testing in Unsaturated Soil. In: Mancuso, C., Jommi, C., D’Onza, F. (eds) Unsaturated Soils: Research and Applications. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31116-1_15
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-31116-1_15
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
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