DISCUSSIONS

Measurement of soil strength in simple shear tests: Discussion1

University of Science and Technology, Kumasi, Ghana
AND

F. TATSUOKA
Institute of Industrial Science, University of Tokyo, 7-22-1 Roppongi, Minato-ku, Tokyo 106, Japan Received September 10, 1991 Accepted February 17, 1992

Can.

Geotech. J. 29, 874-877

(1992)

The use of the conventional simple shear apparatus for measuring the shear strength parameters of soils has some merits over many of the existing laboratory testing apparatuses. However, one of the drawbacks of the conventional simple shear apparatus is its inability to measure all the stress components, thus necessitating the need for various assumptions to construct the Mohr circle of stress (Wroth 1987) and to evaluate the shear strength in terms of principal stresses. In the above paper, it was assumed that the ratio of the horizontal stress (a,!,) to the vertical stress (a;) at the critical state increases with overconsolidation ratio ( O C R ) ~ and that for heavily overconsolidated specimens, failure occurs well in the passive state, i.e., a,!, > a;. Based on these assumptions, it was deduced in the paper that, given that the critical state friction angle +,', = arcsin[(oi - a;)/ a{ + a;)],, is independent of the consolidation history, the simple shear critical state stress ratio angle p,', = arctan(~;/o:),, increases with OCR. In the conventional simple shear apparatus, such assumptions and any subsequent deduction cannot be adequately evaluated. As part of a study into the behaviour of reconstituted kaolin (liquid limit (LL) = 84.2%, plasticity index (PI) = 43.6%, and G, = 2.65) in simple shear from very small strains to failure and the effect of consolidation history, we used an automated hollow cylinder torsional simple shear apparatus, which in addition to several other capabilities can consolidate specimens along various stress paths and also measure all stress components accurately during all stages of testing. In these undrained simple shear tests, all the incremental strains in the axial, circumferential and radial directions were maintained to be zero. For details of the apparatus, test procedure, and test results see Ampadu (1991) and Ampadu and Tatsuoka (1992). Some relevant extracts from this study are presented to discuss some of our findings with respect to the above-mentioned assumption. Table 1 summarizes the consolidation and undrained simple shear failure conditions of some of our results of tests on hollow cylinder specimens of initial dimensions as fol'paperby J.H. Atkinson, W.H.W. Lau, and J. J.M. Powell. 1991. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, 28: 255-262. 20verconsolidation ratio OCR is given as R in the DaDer under * discussion.
Printed in Canada / Imprime au Canada

lows: 16 cm height, 10 cm outer diameter, and 6 cm inner diameter. The relationship between the effective axial stress a; and the effective circumferential stress a; for these tests is shown in Fig. la. In the hollow cylinder, the stresses a; and a; are equivalent to the vertical stress a; and the horizontal stress a,!,, respectively, referred to in the paper. The specimens were first KO-normally reconsolidated (test A201-1) and, for overconsolidated tests, later KO-rebounded along KO = OCR'.~ from about the same preconsolidation pressure a;,. The KO-reboundstress path is based on Mayne and Kulhawy (1982) using = 17". The variation of the stress ratio K = a;/u,' as shearing progresses is shown in Fig. 2. This figure and Fig. l a illustrate our observation that, despite their different initial values, the stress ratios K = a;/a; change rapidly, moving towards a common value close to unity but always on the active side, i.e., a;

+'

<

a;.

Owing to slight pressure changes between the recorded end of consolidation and the beginning of shearing, different values of overconsolidation ratios may be obtained depending on whether the definition is based on the stress state at or at the beginthe end of consolidation (OCRc = U,',/U;~) ning of shearing (OCR = a;,/a,',). The differences in the values obtained with the different definitions, listed in Table 1, may be considered insignificant except for test A098-1 conducted at a relatively low pressure level. The details of this test are shown in Fig. l b as a typical heavily overconsolidated specimen. For this test, the slight change in pressure reduced the stress ratio K at the start of shearing from 1.30 to 1.12. Nevertheless, this figure and Fig. 2 clearly show that for a heavily overconsolidated specimen, even though the stress path starts from a passive stress state (K > l), it rapidly crosses over from this state to the active stress state (K < 1) and remains in this state until failure. The implications of this behaviour in terms of the direction a of the major principal stress from the vertical are shown in Fig. 3. (In the hollow cylinder apparatus, a can be determined, since all the stress components are measured.) The figure shows that a changes rapidly from 0" for normally and lightly overconsolidated specimens and from 90" for heavily overconsolidated specimens towards a common value slightly less than 45". There is also the tendency for a slight increase of a with OCR at large strain levels.

DISCUSSIONS
I

875

TABLE 1. Consolidation and failure parameters

Consolidation Test name
A201-1 A132-1 A154-1 A098-1 K~ 0.70 0.86 1.03 1.30

Failurea (kgf/cm2)
3.72 1.67 0.74 0.30
"ac
I

wf
(070)

dpd

(kgf/cm2)
3.71 3.75 3.77 3.81

(kgf/cm2)
3.71 1.70 0.75 0.39

dse

OCR:
1.00 2.25 5.09 12.7

OcRh
1.00 2.20 5.03 9.80

(kgf/cm2)
0.631 0.484 0.342 0.229

Tmax

(deg)
39 40 42 43

a;

(deg)
17.1 18.1 20.8 21.2

(deg)
15.3 16.3 18.8 19.4

PF

,k

50.00 51.85 52.57 55.36

aThe failure parameters are defined at 7 = 20% and at the end of test for test A098-1. b~tress ratio o;/o; at the end of consolidation. CWater content at the end of test. d~reconsolidationeffective axial stress. eEffective axial stress at the beginning of shearing. f~ffectiveaxial stress at the end of consolidation. gOCRc = o~,/o~,. h~~~ = o;,/o;,. ',Direction of o; from the vertical. Jq$ = arcsin[(oi - u;)/(u~ + u;)]~. kph = arctan(~/o;)~.

(b)
1.00
h

'

'

Test A098-1 1 4 2 : Undrained simple shear

bD

.0.60 -

,.

0.00

0.20

0.40

0.60

0.80

1.00

Effective circumferential stress, ao/ (kgf/cm2) FIG. 1. (a) Relationship between oi and a,' during undrained simple shear. (b) Details of relationship between a; and a,' for a typical heavily overconsolidated specimen. 1 kgf = 9.806 N. KO, coefficient of earth pressure at rest; K,, coefficient of active earth pressure; K,, coefficient of passive earth pressure.

Effective circumferential stress, us/ (kgf/cm2)

The stress paths on the horizontal and vertical planes are shown in Fig. 4. The top half of the figure shows the stress path on the horizontal plane, whereas the bottom half shows the stress path on the vertical plane. The arrows and the corresponding numerical values show the direction of the major principal stress a{ and the corresponding value of the shear strain. Figure 5 shows the relationships between the stress ratio T/U; and the shear strain for all the tests. It may be seen from Figs. 4 and 5 that at or around a shear strain, y, of

about 20070, at which the tests were terminated, the rate of increase of the stress ratio T/U; has slowed to a minimal value. The variations of the principal stress ratio c~/u; during simple shear for these tests are shown in Fig. 6. Here, the strengths defined at y = 20% or at the end of shearing, whichever was attained first, were taken to represent the failure strengths. The variation with OCR of the failure friction angles 4; = arcsin[(ui - u;)/(ui + (T;)IF and pAF = arctan(~/u;)~ is shown in Fig. 7. The similar trends for the two friction angles are obvious. It is clear from this figure

876

CAN. GEOTECH. J. VOL. 29, 1992

90
I

.Start

of t e s t AO98-1

0.60

10

15
aJaL

20

25

0 0

I
25

Shear strain, y(%)

FIG. 2. Variation of stress ratio K = simple shear.
during undrained

15 S h e a r s t r a i n , y(%)

10

20

FIG. 3. Variation of principal stress direction a during undrained simple shear.

FIG. 4. Effective stress paths on the horizontal and vertical planes during undrained simple shear.

that, as far as our test results in torsional simple shear are concerned, the increase in pb with overconsolidation ratio is due probably almost entirely to the increase in 6; with OCR. The contribution, if any, of any increase in K = u ; / u ; at failure with OCR will at best be very small. The undrained simple shear tests presented in this discussion may not have attained a clearly defined critical state unlike the constant-volume simple shear tests performed by the authors and shown in Fig. 9b of their paper. This notwithstanding, Fig. 2 clearly shows the tendency that, as the

; / a ; approaches shear strain increases, the stress ratio K = a a common value irrespective of OCR. A similar tendency as described above was observed in drained torsional simple shear tests on normally and overconsolidated sand specimens (Teachervorasinskun 1989). It therefore seems that the stress ratio K at failure is almost independent of the OCR, irrespective of the drainage condition. A common value of the stress ratio K may also be arrived at by noting that, in a drained simple shear test at the critical state where there is no volumetric strain and also throughout

DISCUSSIONS
0.40

m
0,

877
30
I
I I l l

& WJ
V

a
. .

0.30

.
\

,$ 2 5 a a
20WJ

b"
C

E : m

4 ,

."
0
Y

2
Y) Y)

0.20

al

T
e 5 :

.+
0.10

b
I .k

15-

10
0.00
5

10

20

50

Shear strain, 7(%)

Overconsolidation Ratio, O C R

FIG. 5. Variation of stress ratio r/a; during undrained simple

shear.

FIG.7. Variation of failure strengths 4f and pf with OCR. sin 4;

= [(a;
-

a;)/(a,'

a;)lF; tan p;

(T/u&

that of del (i.e., 45"), irrespective of OCR. A tendency towards co-axiality between qi,and d q at large strains has also been observed in simple shear tests on sand by Stroud (1971). In summary, our results of torsional simple shear tests do not support the assumption used in the paper that the stress ratio K = ai/a; at the critical state increases appreciably with overconsolidation ratio. It is unlikely, therefore, that the increase in the friction angle p& with OCR observed in the results shown in the paper arises from the increase in K a t the critical state with OCR, as suggested in the paper.
Ampadu, S.K. 1991. The behaviour of kaolin in undrained torsional simple shear. Ph.D. thesis, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Ampadu, S.K., and Tatsuoka, F. 1992. A hollow cylinder torsional simple shear apparatus capable of a wide range of shear strain measurement. Geotechnical Testing Journal, ASTM, accepted for publication. Mayne, P.W., and Kulhawy, F.H. 1982. KO-OCR relationships in soils. ASCE Journal of the Geotechnical Engineering Division, 108(GT6): 851-866. Stroud, M.A. 1971. The behaviour of sand at low stress levels in the simple shear apparatus. Ph.D. thesis, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, U.K. Teachervorasinskun. S. 1989. Stress-strain and strength characteristics of granular materials in simple shear. M.Eng. thesis, University of Tokyo, Tokyo, Japan. Wroth, C.P. 1987. The behaviour of normally consolidated clay as observed in undrained direct shear tests. Geotechnique, 37: 37-43.

1O . 0

0
5
10
15 20
25

Shear strain, r(%)

FIG. 6. Variation of principal stress ratio @;/a; during undrained simple shear. undrained simple shear, the direction of the major principal strain increment del is 45' from the vertical. Since strain increments are predominantly plastic at the critical state, the direction of a;, neglecting any remaining inherent anisotropy even at large strain levels, can be said to be close to