Abstract
The tensile strength of soil is a major mechanical parameter controlling the development of tensile cracking, which is commonly encountered in many earth structures. This paper aims to identify the tensile behavior of different clayey soils. On one hand, the properties of unsaturated clayey soils were analyzed. On the other hand, the influence of the mineralogy of clays on tensile strength was investigated. Four types of soils with very different properties were investigated: the kaolin P300, which is a low plasticity clay, the montmorillonite clay with high plastic limit and swelling behavior, and two mixtures of these two clays with intermediate behaviors. For the tensile tests, the approach consisted in using a specific tensile device which allowed imposing the tensile load and measuring the global displacement under nil confining stress. The originality of the article is to combine Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique with tensile test on clayey soil slurries with different mineralogies. Four parameters were chosen to identify the tensile behavior of the slurries in this research: the maximum tensile stress, the mean stress modulus (E50), the secant modulus at the axial strain of 10−3, and the strain anisotropy ratio. The results highlighted the influence of water content, suction, and mineralogy on the tensile behavior of the materials.
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Abbreviations
- \({I}_{P}\) :
-
Plasticity index
- \({I}_{L}\) :
-
Liquidity index
- \(\upsigma\) :
-
Tensile stress
- \(F\) :
-
Load measured during the tensile tests
- \({S}_{0}\) :
-
Initial cross-area of the sample (20 mm × 40 mm)
- \(\varepsilon\) :
-
Global deformation of the sample
- \(\Delta l\) :
-
Global displacement measured by the sensor
- \({l}_{0}\) :
-
Original length of the sample (20 mm)
- \(U\) :
-
Longitudinal displacement (along x-axis), compared with the reference image
- \(V\) :
-
Transversal displacement (along y-axis)
- \({\varepsilon }_{xx}\) :
-
Normal component of strain in the x direction
- \({\varepsilon }_{xy}\) :
-
Shear strain (distortion)
- \({\varepsilon }_{yy}\) :
-
Normal component of strain in the y direction
- \(w\) :
-
Water content
- \(\Delta e\) :
-
Variation of void ratio with respect to initial void ratio e0
- \(e\) :
-
Void ratio
- \(s\) :
-
Suction
- \({w}_{i}\) :
-
Initial water content
- \({w}_{L}\) :
-
Liquid limit
- \({w}_{SL}\) :
-
Shrinkage limit
- \({e}_{SL}\) :
-
Shrinkage limit void ratio
- \({s}_{SL}\) :
-
Shrinkage limit suction
- \({\gamma }_{s}\) :
-
Unit weight of soil
- \({\gamma }_{w}\) :
-
Unit weight of water
- \({G}_{s}\) :
-
Specific gravity
- \({\varepsilon }_{v}\) :
-
Volumetric deformation
- \({\varepsilon }_{xx}^{AOI}\) :
-
\({\varepsilon }_{xx}\) In the area of interest (AOI)
- \({\varepsilon }_{yy}^{AOI}\) :
-
\({\varepsilon }_{yy}\) In the area of interest (AOI)
- \({E}_{50}\) :
-
The mean stress modulus
- \({E}_{\mathrm{se}c}\) :
-
The secant modulus
- \({E}_{sec}^{0.1\%}\) :
-
The secant modulus for an axial strain \({\varepsilon }_{yy}^{AOI}\) = 0.1%
- \(\nu\) :
-
Strain anisotropy ratio.
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Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the French-Chinese Project Xu Guangqi of Campus France (grant number 41221YC); the China Postdoctoral Science Foundation (grant number 2017M623180); the National Key Research and Development Program of China (grant number 2018YFC150470ZKT01); and the National Natural Science Foundation of Youth (grant number 42007278).
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All authors contributed to the study conception and design. Material preparation, data collection, and analysis were performed by Xin Wei, Zhengtian Yang, Jean-Marie Fleureau, Mahdia Hattab, Taibi Said, and Xu Ling. The first draft of the manuscript was written by Xin WEI and all authors commented on previous versions of the manuscript. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
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Wei, X., Yang, Z., Fleureau, JM. et al. Tensile strength identification of remolded clayey soils. Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 405 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02879-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-02879-6