Stress-strain relationship with soil structural parameters of collapse loess

Abstract

Through the tri-axial shearing tests of unsaturated intact loess and based on the concept of comprehensive soil structural potential, this paper reveals the changing laws of soil structural property under the tri-axial stress conditions and establishes a mathematical expression equation of structural parameters, whereby reflecting the effects of unsaturated loess water content, stress and strain states, which is introduced into the shearing stress and shearing strain relation to obtain the structural stress-strain relation. The tests reveal that the loess dilatancy is of shearing contraction and shearing expansion, whereby indicating that there is a good linear relation between the stress ratio and shearing expansion strain ratio. The larger consolidation confining pressure is, the larger the stress of shearing contraction and expansion critical point is; and the larger water content is, the smaller the strain ratio of shearing contraction and expansion critical point is. Finally, the constitutive model is established to reflect the variation in loess structure, stress-strain softening and hardening, and shearing contraction and shearing expansion features. Through the comparative analysis, the stress-strain curves described by the constitutive relationship are found to be in good conformity with test results, whereby testing the rationality of the model in this paper.