Inflow and outflow permeability tests in a very soft clay under low stresses

In situ inflow and outflow permeability tests with the BAT probe at SarapuíII soft clay test site are presented.A description of the BAT permeability test is provided,discussing its advantages and shortcomings,especially in the case of very soft clays under low stresses.Pore pressures were monitored during probe installation and were found to be slightly lower than piezocone u2 pore pressures,consistent with the position of the filter.The role of filter tip saturation was investigated after the usual saturation procedure provided an unsatisfactory pore pressure response during probe installation.Results show that the vacuum saturation procedure provides adequate response during installation and increases the reliability of the coefficient of permeability determination in early measurements.Both inflow and outflow tests yielded similar results,indicating that careful execution of the test can lead to good test repeatability regardless of the loading condition.Various sequences of alternated inflow and outflow tests have yielded similar results,indicating that soil reconsolidation and filter clogging were negligible in the tests performed.Data are presented concerning the relationship between index parameters and the in situ coefficient of permeability for SarapuíII clay,which plot outside the range of existing databases.

CENTRIFUGAL TEST STUDY ON THE BEHAVIOR OF SOFT CLAY AT SEA BOTTOM UNDER THE ACTION OF WAVE FORCE

The importance of studying the behavior of the soil at the sea bottom under the action of wave force has arisen with the development of offshore engineering.In this paper,the behavior of the soft clay under the action of wave forces is studied by performing centrifugal tests.The soil profile and the wave characters were simulated in the centrifugal model cell according to the typical environmental conditions of the oil fields in the Bohai gulf.Test results show that the soft clay layer will be seriously softened near the upper surface under the maximum wave height and slightly affected in the deeper layer,and that no liquefaction was recorded in the silty sand sublayer during the test.It is proven that the centrifugal test is a valid technique for simulating the interaction between soil and wave.

Review of research on interactions between deepwater steel catenary risers and soft clay seabeds

Steel catenary risers （SCR） have become an enabling technology for deepwater environments. A comprehensive review was conducted on recent research that examined interactions between deepwater steel catenary risers and soft clay seabeds. This included the STRIDE （steel risers in deepwater environments） and CARISIMA （catenary riser soil interaction model for global riser analysis） joint jndustry jrogram＇s test data as well as information from existing papers.

Mathematical Model Analysis of Quasi Preconsolidation Soft Clay

Soft clay may cause quasi preconsolidation effect under the constant hydrostatic pressure after some time. The result of drained triaxial test represents the effective stress yield surface, which can be described by simple binary linear fabric model. Therefore the pore pressure and deformation of clay can be decided. It also can be used to resolve the real boundary problems with finite element method.

Influence of features of natural soft clay on behaviour of embankment

The influence of different features of natural soft clays,namely anisotropy,destructuration and viscosity,on modelling the time-dependent behaviour of Murro embankment was investigated.The newly developed elasto-viscoplastic models were enhanced for determining viscosity parameters in a straightforward way and adopted for the finite element analysis.The same set of common parameters determined from conventional triaxial and oedometer tests was employed for all models,with additional parameters required for representing different soil features.The finite element predictions by using models coupled with BIOT's consolidation theory were compared with each other and with field data for settlement,horizontal displacement and excess pore pressures.In addition,the stress paths under the embankment loading were also compared with each other to improve the understanding of the effect of different soil features.All simulations demonstrate that all three features significantly influence the predictions.As a consequence,accounting for soil features needs to be carefully considered when they are applied to a construction site.

Stiffness Degradation of Undisturbed Saturated Soft Clay in the Yangtze Estuary Under Complex Stress Conditions

Stiffness degradation will occur due to the generation of accumulated pore pressure in saturated soft clays under cyclic loading. The soil static-dynamic multi-purpose triaxial and torsional shear apparatus in Dalian University of Technology was employed to perform different types of test on the saturated soft marine clay in the Yangtze Estuary. Undisturbed samples of the clay were subjected to undrained cyclic vertical and torsional coupling shear and cyclic torsional shear after three-directional anisotropic consolidation with different initial consolidation parameters. Investigated were the effects of the initial orientation angle of the major principal stress, initial ratio of deviatoric stress, initial coefficient of intermediate principal stress and continuous rotation of principal stress axes on the stiffness degradation. It is found that the degradation index decreases （or degradation degree increases） significantly with increasing initial orientation angle of the major principal stress and initial ratio of deviatoric stress. Compared with the effects of the initial orientation angle of the major principal stress and initial ratio of deviatoric stress, the effect of initial coefficient of intermediate principal stress is less evident and this trend is more clearly reflected by the results of the cyclic torsional shear tests than those of the cyclic coupling shear tests. At the same cycle number, the degradation index obtained from the cyclic torsional shear test is higher than that from the cyclic coupling shear test. The main reason is that the continuous rotation in principal stress directions during cyclic coupling shear damages the original structure of the soil more than the cyclic torsional shear does.Based on a series of experiments, a mathematical model for stiffness degradation is proposed and the relevant parameters are determined.

Prediction of Settlements of Soft Clay Subjected to Long-Term Dynamic Load

Presented is the numerical analysis of settlements of soft soil by a 2-D dynamic effective stress FEM method. The model based on the results of cyclic triaxial tests on the reconstituted soft Ariake clay is used to predict the wave induced excess pore water pressure and residual strain of soft clay. The settlements of two types of breakwaters on the soft clay under ocean wave load, a low embankment subjected to traffic load and the tunnel surrounded by soft clay in Shanghai subjected to locomotive load are calculated as examples.

Settlement and Stability Analysis on Soft Clay Under Cyclic Loading

The results of undrained cyclic triaxial tests on three types of clays are collected and a relationship among the accumulated strain, the initial stress state, cyclic stress in the soil, as well as the number of cycles is established based on the experimental data. With this relationship, a procedure is proposed for subsidence and stability analysis on soft clay under the action of cyclic loads.

Non-mechanical behaviors of soft clay in two-dimensional electro-osmotic consolidation

To investigate the soil behaviors in a direct current field on both spatial and temporal scales, a 1: 5 scale model test was conducted in laboratory to simulate the two-dimensional (2D) electro-osmotic consolidation of soft clay foundation. Volume of drainage, intensity, voltage, water content and pH value of water collected in the cathodes were monitored. The pH values of soil and the mass of anodes were measured before and after the test. The test results indicate that the unsaturated state, resultant from fissures induced by the differences in water contents, is favorable to dynamic compaction of soil during electro-osmotic drainage. The results also demonstrate that water content, degree of saturation and electric potential distributions can be used to deduce the electro-osmotic drainage process. Water content of soil decreases first near electrodes, while keeps nearly constant in the center of the model. The area with constant water content is larger than half of the sample surface. Moving anodes towards cathodes by about one third of the electrode spacing is effective to improve the treatment effect after electro-osmosis stops due to the large resistance. Moreover, it is observed that during electro-osmosis, the corrosion rate of anodes becomes smaller, while the variation in pH values of soil near anodes becomes larger.

Stabilization effects of surplus soft clay with cement and GBF slag

Utilization of industrial waste and surplus construction soft clay as construction material was recommended, and many attempts at geotechnical waste utilization were undertaken. This study aimed at the application of cement and a kind of industrial wastes, i.e. granulated blast furnace slag, on stabilization of surplus soft clay. The results showed that the cement and slag can successfully stabilize Ariake clays even though this high organic clay fails to be stabilized by lime and cement. Addition of slag in cement for stabilization induces higher strength than cement alone for longer curing time. The application of the cement with slag is more suitable than cement alone for stabilization because of economical consideration.

A Nonlinear Rheological Model of Soft Clay and Its Application in Settlement of Sunk Ship

A one-dimensional consolidation-creep model test on the creep deformation of soft muddy clay in the littoral area of Tianjin is performed. A nonlinear rheologic model is established and the model coefficients are determined, in consideration of the characteristics of soft muddy clay. Furthermore, a settlement equation is deduced from the theologic model and verified by the field settlement measurements of Beitang Reservoir dam in Tianjin littoral area. Finally, the settlement e- quation is applied in calculating the settlement of ＂FAIRWAY-＂ suction dredger, which sunk in the external channel of Tianjin Port, induced by the soft clay consolidation of seabed. These results provide useful information for the decision of salvage plan.

Numerical Modelling for Dynamic Instability Process of Submarine Soft Clay Slopes Under Seismic Loading

Marine geological disasters occurred frequently in the deep-water slope area of the northern South China Sea,especially submarine landslides,which caused serious damage to marine facilities.The cyclic elastoplastic model that can describe the cyclic stress-strain response characteristic for soft clay,is embedded into the coupled Eulerian-Lagrangian(CEL)algorithm of ABAQUS by means of subroutine interface technology.On the basis of CEL technique and undrained cyclic elastoplastic model,a method for analyzing the dynamic instability process of marine slopes under the action of earthquake load is developed.The rationality for cyclic elastoplastic constitutive model is validated by comparing its calculated results with those of von Mises model built in Abaqus.The dynamic instability process of slopes under different conditions are analyzed.The results indicate that the deformation accumulation of soft clay have a significant effect on the dynamic instability process of submarine slopes under earthquake loading.The cumulative deformation is taken into our model and this makes the calculated final deformation of the slope under earthquake load larger than the results of conventional numerical method.When different contact conditions are used for analysis,the smaller the friction coefficient is,the larger the deformation of slopes will be.A numerical analysis method that can both reflect the dynamic properties of soft clay and display the dynamic instability process of submarine landslide is proposed,which could visually predict the topographies of the previous and post failure for submarine slope.

Cyclic deformation behaviour of natural K_0-consolidated soft clay under different stress paths

Characteristic of cyclic loading due to passing wheels is associated with one-way loading without stress reversal,which includes a simultaneous cyclic variation of vertical normal stress and horizontal normal stress lasting for a long period of time and generally takes place in partially-drained conditions.Therefore,it is of great practical relevance to study the deformation behaviour according to the characteristic of traffic loading.In this work,a series of one-way stress-controlled cyclic triaxial tests with a simultaneous variation of the vertical and horizontal stress components during cyclic loading were conducted to investigate the deformation behaviour of natural K_0-consolidated soft clay in partially-drained conditions.Test results demonstrate that not only the deviator part of the stress rules accumulation but also the volumetric part significantly contributes.While the deviator part of the stress amplitude is held constant,the increase amplitude of cyclic confining pressure will promote the development of both permanent volumetric strain and axial strain significantly.Furthermore,the effects of cyclic confining pressure on the deformation of natural K_0-consolidated soft clay was quantified.Finally,an empirical formula for permanent axial strain considering the effects of cyclic confining pressure was proposed which can be used for feasibility studies or for the preliminary design of foundations on K_0-consolidated soft clay subjected to traffic loading.

Pore Pressure Accumulation of Anisotropically Consolidated Soft Clay Subjected to Complex Loads Under Different Stress Paths

Owing to different influence factors of foundation soil,the initial stress state of the soil under various working conditions is complex.To simulate this situation,in this paper,a series of tests on undisturbed soft clay under pure principal stress axis rotation were carried out by using the hollow cylinder apparatus(HCA).The influence of initial consolidation angle ζ(the angle between the vertical direction and direction of the applied load in consolidation)and intermediate principal stress coefficient b on pore water pressure accumulation of undisturbed soft clay were mainly studied.The test results show that,during pure principal stress axis rotation,the pore water pressure accumulation of the undisturbed soft clay fluctuates and increases with the rotation of the major principal stress;the values of major principal stress anglesα,corresponding to the peak value of the pore water pressure in a certain cycle,are different with different initial consolidation angles;the pore water pressure accumulation of soft clay is greatly affected by the intermediate principal stress coefficient b.With the fixed initial consolidation angle ζ,the variation trend of the maximum pore water pressure for each cycle is appropriately the same with different b values.With the increase of cycles,the difference value of pore water pressure between b=0 and b=1 in each cycle increases gradually with different initial consolidation angles ζ.While with different initial consolidation anglesζ,the increase of the pore water pressure when b increases from 0 to 0.5 is different with that when b increases from 0.5 to 1;the variation of maximum pore water pressure withζis significantly affected by the value of b;the value of maximum pore water pressure increases with the cycle number increases under all test conditions,but the growth rate decreases gradually.And the variation of maximum pore water pressure with the cycle number N is obviously influenced by both ζ and b.

Vane Shear Strength Based Stability Analysis of Slopes in Unconsolidated Soft Clay

In-situ vane shear test is frequently performed to determine shear strength for slope stability analysis in Tianjin New Harbor.However,the soil shear strength varies with the shear plane orientation.A possible means to reduce the effect of directional dependency of shear strength is to convert the in-situ vane shear strength into undrained shear strength parameters.A method of converting in-situ vane shear strength into undrained shear strength parameters is presented.The shear strength parameters determined for all of the in-situ vane shear strengths are subjected to statistical regression analysis to take into consideration the possible effect of non-homogeneity in the soft clay deposit.Using the regressed shear strength parameters,slope stability analyses are performed for five existing soil slopes.The results of stability analyses indicate that the safety factors obtained from the converted parameters reflect the state of the slopes analyzed much better than those obtained from in-situ vane shear strength and laboratory consolidated-undrained and unconsolidated-undrained strength parameters.It is concluded that the presented methsod of determining undrained shear strength parameters for in-situ vane shear strength is effective.

Theory and Practice of Soft Clay Engineering

-The shear strength and deformation properties of soft clay are discussed first. Then some methods for predicting the performance of soft clay foundation are proposed. Finally, case histories are presented to illustrate some discussed aspects of soft clay.

Characteristics of Saturated Soft Clay in Dynamic Deformation

-This paper presents the research results of dynamic pore water pressure and the characteristics of dynamic deformation of saturated soft clay and the factors affecting the dynamic pore water pressure and dynamic deformation. Dynamic triaxial compression tests are carried out and the soil samples used in the tests are remoulded clay from the seabed of the Bohai Bay. The paper also deals with the dynamic deformation mechanism of saturated soft clay foundation without drain. A calculation model for permanent dynamic deformation of saturated soft clay foundation has been established.

Stress and Displacement Distribution of Soft Clay Slope with 2D and 3D Elastoplastic Finite Element Method

Based on elastoplastic model, 2D and 3D finite element method （FEM） are used to calculate the stress and displacement distribution in the soft clay slope under gravity and uniform load at the slope top. Stability analyses indicate that 3D boundary effect varies with the stress level of the slope. When the slope is stable, end effect of 3D space is not remarkable. When the stability decreases, end effect occurs; when the slope is at limit state, end effect reaches maximum. The energy causing slope failure spreads preferentially along y-z section, and when the failure resistance capability reaches the limit state, the energy can extend along x-axis direction. The 3D effect of the slope under uniform load on the top is related to the ratio of load influence width to slope height, and the effect is remarkable with the decrease of the ratio.

A Normalized Stress-Strain Model for Soft Clays

-A nonlinear model for the stress-strain behaviour of normally consolidated clays is presented based on the experimental results. It is indicated that the volume strain under pure shear is a power function of stress ratio and the normalized stress-strain curve is a standard hyperbola. According to the model, the coefficient of pore pressure induced by shear stress and the critical stress ratio which governs the influence of the negative dilatancy are suggested. It is shown by some triaxial tests that the proposed model can be used to study the negative dilatancy and to describe the stress-strain-pore pressure adequately for soft clays.

Critical Cyclic Stress Ratio of Undisturbed Saturated Soft Clay in the Yangtze Estuary under Complex Stress Conditions

There exists a critical cyclic stress ratio when sand or clay is subjected to cyclic loading. It is an index dis-tinguishing stable state or failure state. The soil static and dynamic universal triaxial and torsional shear apparatus de-veloped by Dalian University of Technology in China was employed to perform different types of tests on saturated soft marine clay in the Yangtze estuary. Undisturbed samples were subjected to undrained cyclic vertical and torsional coupling shear and cyclic torsional shear after three-directional anisotropic consolidation with different initial consoli-dation parameters. The effects of initial orientation angle of major principal stress, initial ratio of deviatoric stress,initial coefficient of intermediate principal stress and stress mode of cyclic shear on the critical cyclic stress ratio wereinvestigated. It is found that the critical cyclic stress ratio decreases significantly with increasing initial orientation angle of major principal stress and initial ratio of deviatoric stress. Compared with the effects of the initial orientationangle of major principal stress and initial ratio of deviatoric stress, the effect of initial coefficient of intermediate prin-cipal stress is less evident. Under the same consolidation condition, the critical cyclic stress ratio from the cyclic cou-pling shear test is lower than that from the cyclic torsional shear test, indicating that the stress mode of cyclic shear has an obvious effect on the critical cyclic stress ratio. The main reason is that the continuous rotation in principal stressdirections during cyclic coupling shear damages the original structure of soil more than the cyclic torsional shear does.