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Time-dependent behavior of saturated silty mudstone under different confining pressures

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Abstract

The long-term stability of rock slopes is greatly affected by the creep behavior of rock mass. This study presents the creep behavior of a saturated silty mudstone that is from the Three Gorges Reservoir in China. Triaxial compression tests and triaxial creep tests were performed on the silty mudstone under different confining pressures. The test results show that the creep behaviors have three stages, namely, the primary creep stage, steady-state stage, and accelerated creep stage when the deviatoric stress is higher than the yield stress of the silty mudstone. The steady-state creep strain rate of the silty mudstone increases with the increment of the axial deviatoric stress. Partial reversals of the axial creep strain curve are found under the confining pressure of 1 MPa and 5 MPa, which may be caused by the expansion of illite minerals after being infiltrated by water in the rock voids. Based on the experimental data of the silty mudstone and the fractional calculus theory, a nonlinear creep model that describes the creep behaviors of the silty mudstone is proposed. The theoretical creep curves obtained from the creep model are in good agreement with the experimental data.

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Abbreviations

σ 1 :

Maximum principal stress

σ 3 :

Confining pressure

σ p :

Peak stress

σ s :

Yield stress

σ 0 :

Deviatoric stress

ε p :

Peak axial strain

ε 0 :

Instantaneous stain

ε m :

Maximum creep strain

\( {\dot{\varepsilon}}_{\mathrm{s}} \) :

Steady strain rate

E t :

Tangent modulus

E 0 :

Elastic modulus

m, n :

Constant in the improved elastic element

η1, η2 :

Coefficient of viscosity

μ :

The order of the fractional derivative

α :

Nonlinearity constant in the nonlinear visco-plastic creep model

t 0 :

The time at which the steady-state creep stage changes to the accelerated creep stage

S1, S2, S3, S4 :

Deviatoric stress level

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Funding

This study is funded by the Key Program of National Natural Science Foundation of China (41630643), the National Key Research and Development Program of China (2017YFC1501302), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities, China University of Geosciences (Wuhan) (CUGCJ1701).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, 430074, Hubei, People’s Republic of China

    Qiang Wang, Xinli Hu, Chu Xu, Chang Zhou, Chuncan He & Chunye Ying

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  1. Qiang Wang
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  2. Xinli Hu
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  3. Chu Xu
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  4. Chang Zhou
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  5. Chuncan He
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  6. Chunye Ying
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Correspondence to Xinli Hu.

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Wang, Q., Hu, X., Xu, C. et al. Time-dependent behavior of saturated silty mudstone under different confining pressures. Bull Eng Geol Environ 79, 2621–2634 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-020-01728-8

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-020-01728-8

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