Influence of anisotropic stress path and stress history on stiffness of calcareous sands from Western Australia and the Philippines

Investigation of dynamic properties of carbonate/calcareous soils is important in earthquake and offshore engineering as these soils are commonly encountered in large-scale projects related with energy geomechanics and land reclamation. In this study, the stiffness and stiffness anisotropy of two types of calcareous sands (CS) from the Western Australia and the Philippines were examined using bender elements configured in different directions in stress path setups. Stiffness measurements were taken on specimens subjected to constant p′ compression/extension and biaxial stress paths and additional tests were performed on three types of silica sands with different geological origins and particle shapes, which were used as benchmark materials in the study. Compared with the three brands of silica sands, the stiffness of the CS was found to be more significantly influenced by anisotropic loading; an important observation of the experimental results was that stress anisotropy had different weighted influences on the stiffness in different directions, thus influencing stiffness anisotropy. Comparisons were made between the specimens subjected to complex loading paths, and respected model parameters as suggested from published expressions in the literature. These comparisons further highlighted that calcareous soils have different responses in terms of stiffness, stiffness anisotropy and loading history, compared with that of silica-based sands

Application of Nanoindentation in the Characterization of a Porous Material with a Clastic Texture

In materials science and engineering, a significant amount of research has been carried out using indentation techniques in order to characterize the mechanical properties and microstructure of a broad range of natural and engineered materials. However, there are many unresearched or partly researched areas, such as, for example, the investigation of the shape of the indentation load–displacement curve, the associated mechanism in porous materials with clastic texture, and the influence of the texture on the constitutive behavior of the materials. In the present study, nanoindentation is employed in the analysis of the mechanical behavior of a benchmark material composed of plaster of Paris, which represents a brand of highly porous-clastic materials with a complex structure; such materials may find many applications in medicine, production industry, and energy sectors. The focus of the study is directed at the examination of the influence of the porous structure on the load–displacement response in loading and unloading phases based on nanoindentation experiments, as well as the variation with repeating the indentation in already indented locations. Events such as pop-in in the loading phase and bowing out and elbowing in the unloading phase of a given nanoindentation test are studied. Modulus, hardness, and the elastic stiffness values were additionally examined. The repeated indentation tests provided validations of various mechanisms in the loading and unloading phases of the indentation tests. The results from this study provide some fundamental insights into the interpretation of the nanoindentation behavior and the viscoelastic nature of porous-clastic materials. Some insights on the influence of indentation spacing to depth ratio were also obtained, providing scope for further studies

Effect of Young’s Modulus and Surface Roughness on the Inter-Particle Friction of Granular Materials

In the study we experimentally examine the influence of elastic properties and surface morphology on the inter-particle friction of natural soil grains. The experiments are conducted with a custom-built micromechanical apparatus and the database is enhanced by testing engineered-reference grains. Naturally-occurring geological materials are characterized by a wide spectrum of mechanical properties (e.g., Young’s modulus) and surface morphology (e.g., roughness), whereas engineered grains have much more consistent characteristics. Comparing to engineered materials, geological materials are found to display more pronounced initial plastic behavior during compression. Under the low normal load range applied in the study, between 1 and 5 N, we found that the frictional force is linearly correlated with the applied normal load, but we acknowledge that the data are found more scattered for natural soil grains, especially for rough and weathered materials which have inconsistent characteristics. The inter-particle coefficient of friction is found to be inversely correlated with the Young’s modulus and the surface roughness. These findings are important in geophysical and petroleum engineering contents, since a number of applications, such as landslides and granular flows, hydraulic fracturing using proppants, and weathering process of cliffs, among others, can be simulated using discrete numerical methods. These methods employ contact mechanics properties at the grain scale and the inter-particle friction is one of these critical components. It is stressed in our study that friction is well correlated with the elastic and morphological characteristics of the grains

Exploring the Micromechanical Sliding Behavior of Typical Quartz Grains and Completely Decomposed Volcanic Granules Subjected to Repeating Shearing

The micromechanical behavior at grain contacts subjected to tangential and normal forces is of major importance in geotechnical engineering research and practice. The development of the discrete element method (DEM) over the past three decades necessitated a more systematic study on the experimental grain contact behavior of real soil grains as DEM simulations use as input tangential and normal load–displacement relationships at grain contacts. In this study, experimental results conducted at the City University of Hong Kong are presented exploring the tangential load–displacement behavior of geological materials. The focus of the study is to explore the possible effect of repeating the shearing test to the same grains on the inter-particle coefficient of friction accounting for the level of the applied normal load. Additionally, the study reports on the frictional behavior of different geological materials including quartz sand grains, denoted as Leighton Buzzard sand (LBS) in the study and completely decomposed volcanic granules denoted as CDV. Quartz grains may find applications as proppant in petroleum engineering, whilst the CDV granules consisted of a material taken from a recent landslide in Hong Kong, whose applications are related to debris flow. Through the micromechanical sliding experiments, the inter-particle coefficient of friction was quantified following shearing paths of about 60 to 200 microns. While at the smallest vertical load of 1 N, there was not observed a notable effect of the repeating shearing for the LBS grains, it was noticed that for small to medium vertical loads, between 2 and 5 N, the repeating shearing reduced the friction at the contacts of the LBS grains. This trend was clear between the first and second shearing, but additional cycles did not further alter the frictional response. However, at greater vertical loads, between 7 and 10 N, the results showed a continuous increase in the dynamic inter-particle friction for the LBS grains with repeating shearing. It was also noticed that at 7 and 10 N of vertical load, there was absence of a peak state in the tangential force–displacement plot, whereas a peak state was observed at smaller loads particularly for the first shearing cycle. These observations might be explained by the possible plowing effects at greater vertical loads which resulted in an increase of the inter-particle coefficient of friction when the shearing test was repeated. For the CDV granules, only the first shearing cycle gave a peak state and, in general, the effect of repeating the shearing was small but with an increase of the inter-particle friction from the first to the second cycle. Overall, during the repeating shearing the LBS grains had a dynamic inter-particle coefficient of friction that ranged between about 0.18 and 0.38, but the CDV granules exhibited much greater friction with values that corresponded to the steady state sliding that ranged between 0.54 and 0.66 . The observed trends in the study might be due to mechanisms that take place at the atomic level and the possible more pronounced distortion of the surfaces for the CDV granules which are much softer than the LBS grains

A note on influence of stress anisotropy on the Poisson's ratio of dry sand

In this study, extender and bender element tests were conducted investigating the small-strain Poisson's ratio of variable sands, with a focus on the effect of stress anisotropy in order to quantify the sensitivity of Poisson's ratio to the applied deviatoric stress. Four different uniform sands were tested, including a biogenic sand, a crushed rock and two natural sands, covering a wide range of particle shapes. From these sands, eleven samples were prepared in the laboratory and were tested under variable stress paths, maintaining a constant mean effective pressure while increasing the deviatoric compressive load. Under the application of these given stress paths, the data analysis indicated that the sensitivity of Poisson's ratio to the stress ratio was more pronounced for sands with irregularly shaped particles in comparison to sands with fairly rounded and spherical grains. For sands with very irregularly shaped particles, the increase of Poisson's ratio from the isotropic to the anisotropic stress state reached 50%, while this increase for natural sands with fairly rounded particles was in the order of 20%

Small-Strain Shear Modulus and Damping Ratio of Sand-Rubber and Gravel-Rubber Mixtures

Abstract This study examines the small-strain dynamic properties of mixtures composed of sandy and gravelly soils with granulated tire rubber in terms of shear modulus (G O ), and damping ratio in shear (D min ). Torsional resonant column tests are performed on dry, dense specimens of soil-rubber mixtures in a range of soil to rubber particles size 5:1-1:10 and rubber content from 0 to 35% by mixture weight. The experimental results indicate that the response of the mixtures is significantly affected by the content of rubber and the relative size of rubber to soil particles. Concering the small-strain shear modulus, an equivalent void ratio is introduced that considers the volume of rubber particles as part of the total volume of voids. Based on a comprehensive set of test results a series of equations were developed that can be used to evaluate the shear modulus and damping ratio at small shear strain levels if the confining pressure, the content of rubber by mixture weight, the grain size of soil and rubber particles, and the dynamic and physical properties of the intact soil are known

Influence of Loading History and Soil Type on the Normal Contact Behavior of Natural Sand Grain-Elastomer Composite Interfaces

Recycled rubber in granulated form is a promising geosynthetic material to be used in geotechnical/geo-environmental engineering and infrastructure projects, and it is typically mixed with natural soils/aggregates. However, the complex interactions of grains between geological materials (considered as rigid bodies) and granulated rubber (considered as soft bodies) have not been investigated systematically. These interactions are expected to have a significant influence on the bulk strength, deformation characteristics, and stiffness of binary materials. In the present study, micromechanical-based experiments are performed applying cyclic loading tests investigating the normal contact behavior of rigid–soft interfaces. Three different geological materials were used as “rigid” grains, which have different origins and surface textures. Granulated rubber was used as a “soft” grain simulant; this material has viscoelastic behavior and consists of waste automobile tires. Ten cycles of loading–unloading were applied without and with preloading (i.e., applying a greater normal load in the first cycle compared with the consecutive cycles). The data analysis showed that the composite sand–rubber interfaces had significantly reduced plastic displacements, and their behavior was more homogenized compared with that of the pure sand grain contacts. For pure sand grain contacts, their behavior was heavily dependent on the surface roughness and the presence of natural coating, leading, especially for weathered grains, to very high plastic energy fractions and significant plastic displacements. The behavior of the rigid–soft interfaces was dominated by the rubber grain, and the results showed significant differences in terms of elastic and plastic fractions of displacement and dissipated energy compared with those of rigid interfaces. Additional analysis was performed quantifying the normal contact stiffness, and the Hertz model was implemented in some of the rigid and rigid–soft interfaces

A Study on the Failure Behavior of Sand Grain Contacts with Hertz Modeling, Image Processing, and Statistical Analysis

The crushing behavior of particles is encountered in a large number of natural and engineering systems, and it is important for it to be examined in problems related to hydraulic fracturing, where proppant–proppant and proppant–rock interactions are essential to be modeled as well as geotechnical engineering problems, where grains may crush because the transmitted stresses at their contacts exceed their tensile strength. Despite the interest in the study of the crushing behavior of natural particles, most previous experimental works have examined the single-grain or multiple-grain crushing configurations, and less attention has been given in the laboratory investigation of the interactions of two grains in contact up to their failure as well as on the assessment of the methodology adopted to analyze the data. In the present study, a quartz sand of 1.18–2.36 mm in size was examined, performing a total of 244 grain-to-grain crushing tests at two different speeds, 0.01 and 1 mm/min. In order to calculate stresses from the measured forces, Hertz modeling was implemented to calculate an approximate contact area between the particles based on their local radii (i.e., the radius of the grains in the vicinity of their contact). Based on the results, three different modes of failure were distinguished as conservative, fragmentary, and destructive, corresponding to micro-scale, meso-scale, and macro-scale breakage, respectively. From the data, four different classes of curves could be identified. Class-A and class-B corresponded to an initially Hertzian behavior followed by a brittle failure with a distinctive (single) peak point. The occurrence of hardening prior to the failure point distinguished class-B from class-A. Two additional classes (termed as class-C and class-D) were observed having two or multiple peaks, and much larger displacements were necessary to mobilize the failure point. Hertz fitting, Weibull statistics, and clustering were further implemented to estimate the influence of local radius and elastic modulus values. One of the important observations was that the method of analysis adopted to estimate the local radius of the grains, based on manual assessment (i.e., eyeball fitting) or robust Matlab-based image processing, was a key factor influencing the resultant strength distribution and m-modulus, which are grain crushing strength characteristics. The results from the study were further compared with previously reported data on single- and multiple-grain crushing tests

Effects of inclusion of granulated rubber tires on the mechanical behaviour of a compressive sand

Drained triaxial shearing tests were performed on a well-graded compressive sand (completely decomposed granite, CDG) and its mixtures with granulated rubber tires to investigate the effects of rubber size and content on their mechanical behaviour. Three sizes of rubber particles, GR1, GR2, and GR3, were used with size ratios to CDG (D50,rubber : D50,CDG) of 0.9, 3.5, and 7.2, respectively, and the rubber content ranged from 0% to 30%. The results show that for CDG–GR1 mixtures, the strength decreases with increasing rubber content, while for CDG–GR2 and CDG–GR3 mixtures, the strength decreases only at 10% rubber content and then increases markedly with increasing rubber content. The increase of strength is mainly because the inclusion of large rubber particles widens the particle size distributions of the mixtures, resulting in denser packings. The denser packings also lead to a decrease in compressibility. At larger size ratio and higher rubber content, the CDG–rubber mixtures show higher shear strength and lower compressibility than pure CDG, which indicates the CDG–rubber mixtures are very suitable to be used as filling materials.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author