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The impact of stress disturbance on undrained cyclic behaviour of a kaolin clay and settlement of tunnels under cyclic loading

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Abstract

The excavation of a pit or tunnel induces stress disturbances in soils under different stress paths. The cyclic deformation behaviour of soft clay would be affected by the induced stress disturbances. A series of undrained cyclic triaxial tests were performed on a normally consolidated kaolin clay. The stress disturbance was simulated by changing the radial and axial stresses between loading cycles under different stress paths. The effects of stress disturbance schemes on the axial strain and excess pore water pressure accumulation in the clay were presented and discussed. The results indicate that for the samples experiencing stress disturbance with no change in static deviatoric stress, during the subsequent bundle of loading cycles, the axial strain and excess pore water pressure accumulate slightly in the early few cycles and then roughly follow the accumulation tendency similar to that of the sample under continuous cyclic loading. If the static deviatoric stress reduces, after including stress disturbance, axial strain and excess pore water pressure accumulate slightly in the early few cycles and keep almost constant afterwards, regardless of stress disturbance schemes. The accumulation rates of axial strain and excess pore water pressure during the subsequent loading cycles increase if positive static deviatoric stress is induced, and the greater the induced additional static deviatoric stress, the greater the strain accumulation. The axial strain accumulation is governed by static deviatoric stress ratio (q/p′), and independent to stress disturbance schemes. Based on the variation of axial strain accumulation under different stress disturbance schemes, two examples are presented to explain the impact of nearby excavations to the long-term deformation of existing tunnels under cyclic loading.

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Acknowledgements

The project is funded by the Zhejiang Provincial Institute of Communications Planning, Design & Research and the Systematic Project of Guangxi Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Structural Safety (2019ZDX021). The first author received Ph.D. scholarship from the University of New South Wales. The first author would like to thank Dr Zonghui Liu, Mr Tenglong Liang and Mr Xingyu Luo from the College of Civil engineering and Architecture at Guangxi University for their help during the tests.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Engineering and Information Technology, University of New South Wales, Campbell, ACT, 2612, Australia

    Zhiyong Liu & Jianfeng Xue

  2. Guangxi Key Laboratory of Disaster Prevention and Engineering Safety, Guangxi University, Nanning, China

    Zhiyong Liu & Guoxiong Mei

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  1. Zhiyong Liu
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Correspondence to Jianfeng Xue.

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Liu, Z., Xue, J. & Mei, G. The impact of stress disturbance on undrained cyclic behaviour of a kaolin clay and settlement of tunnels under cyclic loading. Acta Geotech. 16, 3947–3961 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-021-01363-x

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