Dynamic properties of crushable soils

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Copyright: He, Huan
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Abstract
Dynamic properties of soils are of great importance in geotechnical engineering and geotechnical earthquake engineering, especially when small-to-medium level deformation takes place. Numerous literature studies explored the dynamic properties of quartz sands, and from which, it could be concluded that small-strain stiffness of quartz sands is principally influenced by mean effective stress, void ratio, coefficient of uniformity and particle shape. Not all soils consist of such strong grains as the quartz sands. Crushable soils, which consist of very weak to weak grains, are wide spread with immense potential and necessity to be utilized in engineering projects, such as carbonate sands and recycled aggregates. However, there are limited studies investigating the dynamic properties of crushable soils in the literature. In this study, the dynamic properties of six types of crushable materials are investigated with resonant column and bender/extender element dynamic test methods. Emphasis is given on small-strain shear modulus, Young’s modulus and Poisson’s ratio. The materials are categorized into two groups, namely (i) crushable natural sands, including a Western Australia carbonate sand (WA CS), a Philippines carbonate sand (PH CS) and a completely decomposed granite (CDG), and (ii) crushable recycled aggregates, including a Sydney recycled concrete aggregate (SYD RCA), a recycled road base aggregate (RRB) and a Hong Kong recycled concrete aggregate (HK RCA). The major contributions of this thesis can be concluded as: i. The calibration exercise of a new generation resonant column of complex boundary conditions applying simple but innovative calibration procedure. ii. The proposal of an “equivalent solid grain void ratio” concept which successfully described and interpreted the dynamic behavior of carbonate soils of highly porous and weak grains. iii. The investigation of the previous loading history (in terms of overconsolidation) on the dynamic behavior of crushable sands, which has been ignored in most of previous studies. iv. The innovative analysis of multi-compositional materials of recycled aggregates understanding the effects of the individual element compounds, which is the first of its type in soil dynamics research. v. The complementary study of the dynamic properties of soils subjected to stress anisotropy.
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Author(s)
He, Huan
Supervisor(s)
Khoshghalb, Arman
Senetakis, Konstantinos
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Publication Year
2018
Resource Type
Thesis
Degree Type
PhD Doctorate
UNSW Faculty
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