Cyclic Failure Characteristics of Silty Sands with the Presence of Initial Shear Stress

Abstract

The liquefaction of silty sands remains an outstanding issue since it triggers catastrophic hazards in recent earthquake events. The cyclic failure pattern is one of the fundamental aspects of liquefaction analysis. However, due to various influencing factors, such as packing density, confining pressure, initial shear stress, cyclic loading amplitude, etc., the failure patterns are less well understood and the underlying mechanism remains unclear. This study presents a series of laboratory testing results to identify the cyclic failure patterns of silty sands considering different soil states, fines contents, initial static shear stress, etc. The key finding is that the failure patterns are related to the states of soils and the cyclic loading characteristics, i.e., the combination of initial shear stress, density, confining stress and cyclic loading amplitude. Limitations of the existing prediction methods are discussed, and future work is also suggested.