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.

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.

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.