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Undrained creep behavior of a compacted clay under low confining pressure

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Abstract

An experimental investigation is made for evaluating the long-term creep behavior of a compacted clay under low confining pressure (from 12 to 50 kPa). Specimens compacted at the natural dry density and natural water content were first subjected to consolidated undrained shear tests to determine the shear strength. Undrained triaxial creep tests were thereafter conducted to study the axial strain versus time relationships under different deviatoric stress levels which were determined referencing the shear strength. Mercury intrusion porosimetry tests were performed to track the evolution of the microstructure during the undrained creep. Testing results showed that (i) the diameter of the dominant pores within the clay increases under low confining pressure but decreases under higher confining pressure after undrained creep, (ii) all axial strain versus time relationships show attenuated or transitional characteristics and no creep rupture occurs, and (iii) the proportion of total progressive axial strain in the total axial strain increases with the increasing deviatoric stress level and decreasing confining pressure. Three approaches were used to predict the measured axial strain versus time relationships under low confining pressures. Good agreements have been achieved between the predictions and measurements obtained in this study, which confirms the validity of the proposed approaches.

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Acknowledgements

The authors gratefully acknowledge the funding received from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos 51979206, 51779191, 51809199).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil Engineering, Wuhan University, Wuhan, Hubei, 430072, China

    Qiu-yang Pei, Wei-lie Zou, Zhong Han & Ke-wei Fan

  2. Key Laboratory of Rock Mechanics in Hydraulic Structural Engineering of the Ministry of Education, Wuhan University, Wuhan, 430072, Hubei, China

    Wei-lie Zou & Zhong Han

  3. School of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Wuhan University of Technology, Wuhan, Hubei, 430072, China

    Xie-qun Wang

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Contributions

Qiu-yang Pei: Conceptualization, Supervision, Methodology, Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing-original draft. Wei-lie Zou: Project administration, Funding acquisition, Writing-review & editing. Zhong Han: Methodology, Project administration, Funding acquisition. Xie-qun Wang: Methodology, Formal analysis, Modelling, Validation. Ke-wei Fan: Project administration, Methodology, Supervision, Writing-review & editing.

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Correspondence to Wei-lie Zou, Zhong Han or Ke-wei Fan.

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Pei, Qy., Zou, Wl., Han, Z. et al. Undrained creep behavior of a compacted clay under low confining pressure. Mech Time-Depend Mater 27, 629–649 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11043-022-09582-9

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