路基结构性能衰变影响因素与机理分析

准确掌握路基结构性能与湿度的相关性,并且能够进行科学的表征,是完善"力学-经验"设计法的基础。鉴于此,综述了路基结构性能的主要影响因素,并探讨了路基结构性能的衰变机理。结果表明:应力状态与路基湿度对路基结构性能影响最为显著,而路基性能衰变可从非饱和土基质吸力、抗剪强度及细颗粒土流失等方面进行解释。

Critical embedment depth of a rigid retaining wall against overturning in unsaturated soils considering intermediate principal stress and strength nonlinearity

The overturning stability is vital for the retaining wall design of foundation pits, where the surrounding soils are usually unsaturated due to water draining. Moreover, the intermediate principal stress does affect the unsaturated soil strength; meanwhile, the relationship between the unsaturated soil strength and matric suction is nonlinear. This work is to present closed-form equations of critical embedment depth for a rigid retaining wall against overturning by means of moment equilibrium. Matric suction is considered to be distributed uniformly and linearly with depth. The unified shear strength formulation for unsaturated soils under the plane strain condition is adopted to characterize the intermediate principal stress effect, and strength nonlinearity is described by a hyperbolic model of suction angle. The result obtained is orderly series solutions rather than one specific answer; thus, it has wide theoretical significance and good applicability. The validity of this present work is demonstrated by comparing it with a lower bound solution. The traditional overturning designs for rigid retaining walls, in which the saturated soil mechanics neglecting matric suction or the unsaturated soil mechanics based on the Mohr-Coulomb criterion are employed, are special cases of the proposed result. Parametric studies about the intermediate principal stress, matric suction and its distributions along with two strength nonlinearity methods on a new defined critical buried coefficient are discussed.

Stress-strain relationship of unsaturated cohesive soil

A moisture-content based constitutive model was proposed based on the hyperbolic model as an attempt to move towards the implementation of unsaturated soil mechanics into routine geotechnical engineering practice. The stress-strain behavior of in-situ soil at a depth of 5 m was investigated by conducting undrained triaxial compression tests using the remolded soil samples. The test results show that the stress-strain relationship of unsaturated cohesive soil is still hyperbolic. The values of parameters a and b given in the model decrease with increasing the confining pressure for soil samples with the same moisture content and increase with increasing the moisture content for soil samples under the same confining pressure. The relationships between parameters a, b and moisture content were studied for confining pressures of 100, 150, 200 and 250 kPa. The comparison between the measured and predicted stress-strain curves for an additional group of soil samples, having a moisture content of 25.4%, shows that the proposed moisture content-dependent hyperbolic model provides a good prediction of stress-strain behavior of unsaturated cohesive soil.

Unanswered questions in unsaturated soil mechanics

The last two to three decades have seen significant advances in the mechanics of unsaturated soils.It is now widely recognized that the fundamental principles in soil mechanics must cover both saturated and unsaturated soils.Nevertheless,there is still a great deal of uncertainties in the geotechnical community about how soil mechanics principles well-established for saturated soils can be extended to unsaturated soils.There is even wide skepticism about the necessity of such extension in engineering practice.This paper discusses some common pitfalls related to the fundamental principles that govern the volume change,shear strength and hydromechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils.It also attempts to address the issue of engineering relevance of unsaturated soil mechanics.