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Acoustic emission characteristics of a dry sandy soil subjected to drained triaxial compression

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Abstract

Acoustic emission (AE) technique that is capable of diagnosing the failure process of stressed materials has rarely reported its application to sandy soils subjected to triaxial compression. In this paper, drained triaxial compression tests incorporating with a high-performance AE measurement system were conducted for dry sands with different confining stresses and initial relative densities. Generally, an increased confining stress or initial relative density generates more acoustic emissions, while there also exist exceptions due to different failure patterns. A good resemblance between stress–strain and AE hit rate–strain relations was observed, and power functions between the mechanical parameters and AE hit rate were well established regardless of different confining stresses and initial relative densities. Besides, the behavioral state of yield and peak during compression could be also evaluated by AE hit rate, compared with conventional stress–strain determination. Particularly, the peak AE hit rate is found not always synchronous to but fluctuating at around the peak stress depending on different failure patterns, which might provide beneficial insights into the incipient failure of sands. The present good consistencies suggest that AE characteristics could be used as alternative parameters to evaluate and even predict the mechanical behavior of dry sands.

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Abbreviations

AE:

Acoustic emission

ɛ a :

Axial strain

σ3′:

Confining stress

Dr:

Initial relative density

N AE :

Cumulative AE hit

\(R_{\text{AE}}\) :

AE hit rate

P AE :

Peak AE hit rate

P S :

Peak stress

SNR:

Signal-to-noise ratio

Y AE :

Yield determined by AE hit rate–strain curve

Y S :

Yield determined by stress-strain curve

a, a′:

Slopes of the fitting curves

b, b′:

Intercepts of the fitting curves

p′:

Mean effective stress

q :

Deviator stress

q/p′:

Effective stress ratio of deviator stress to mean effective stress

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Acknowledgements

This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 41602302), JSPS KAKENHI (Grant No. JP16K14301), Shanghai Sailing Program (Grant No. 18YF1424000) and China Scholarship Council (Grant No. 201506260190). In addition, the authors would like to express their appreciation to Mr. SATO Takeshi of the University of Tokyo for his outstanding technical support.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, 211189, China

    Wenli Lin

  2. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, 113-8656, Japan

    Wenli Lin & Junichi Koseki

  3. Department of Geological Engineering, Nanjing Tech University, Nanjing, 211800, China

    Ang Liu

  4. Department of Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Wuwei Mao

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  1. Wenli Lin
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Lin, W., Liu, A., Mao, W. et al. Acoustic emission characteristics of a dry sandy soil subjected to drained triaxial compression. Acta Geotech. 15, 2493–2506 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-020-00932-w

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