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Effect of initial void ratio on the tensile strength of unsaturated silty soils

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Abstract

The tensile strength of unsaturated soils is a fundamental property in various geotechnical designs. Reliable estimation of the tensile strength of unsaturated soils, in particular fine-grained soils, is required in both theoretical research and engineering practice. Although several tensile strength models have been proposed in the literature, an overestimation may occur over a wide suction range, when applying them in the modelling of tensile strength of fine-grained soils. In this paper, the tensile strength of an unsaturated lean clay has been measured over a wide range of void ratio and water content by employing the Brazilian tensile strength test. A critical degree of saturation can be observed for specimens with different void ratios, at which the soil tensile strength reaches the peak. In addition, a predictive tensile strength model considering the effect of initial void ratio has been subsequently proposed for both coarse-grained and fine-grained unsaturated soils based on the interaction mechanisms between the adsorptive and capillary soil water. Finally, the proposed model has been demonstrated to be capable of modelling the tensile strength characteristic curve of various soil types ranging from clean sands to silty and clayey soils.

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Acknowledgements

The authors express their gratitude for the grants provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 42272312, 52238007 and 41902279), the Fundamental Research Funds for the Provincial Universities of Zhejiang (SJLY2022007), and Guangxi Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering (20YKF06).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Ningbo University, 818 Fenghua Road, Ningbo, 315211, China

    You Gao & Ze Li

  2. School of Transportation Science and Engineering, Beihang University, 37 Xueyuan Road, Haidian District, Beijing, 100191, China

    Wenjie Cui

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, Shanghai University, 99 Shangda Road, Shanghai, 200444, China

    De’an Sun

  4. Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Guilin University of Technology, 12 Jian Gan Road, Guilin, 541004, China

    Haihao Yu

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  1. You Gao
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  2. Ze Li
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  3. Wenjie Cui
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Correspondence to Wenjie Cui or De’an Sun.

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Gao, Y., Li, Z., Cui, W. et al. Effect of initial void ratio on the tensile strength of unsaturated silty soils. Acta Geotech. 18, 3609–3622 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-01800-z

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