On Shear Strength Behavior of Clay with Sudden Failure Response

A. Prashant
Research Associate, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA, 37996, E-mail: aprashan@utk.edu

D. Penumadu
Professor, Dept. of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA, 37996, E-mail: dpenumad@utk.edu, Phone: 865-974-2355, Fax: 865-974-2669

Keywords: Kaolin Clay, Failure criterion, stress-strain behavior, strain localization, 3-D analysis

ABSTRACT: The data obtained from a study on Kaolin clay using True Triaxial Testing on cubical specimens suggest that strain localization occurs during the hardening regime of clay, which leads to a sudden failure response within the specimen. In the absence of localized deformations the soil element may sustain higher state of stress, which is proposed in this paper as the reference stress state. This paper concentrates on the significance of reference stress state with respect to the variation of material stiffness and peak shear stress under sudden failure conditions. The discussion includes a comparison between the reference surface and failure envelope in 3-D stress space based on the experimental observations.

1 Introduction
In an experimental study by the authors, a series of flexible-boundary true triaxial undrained tests was performed on the cubical specimens of normally consolidated to heavily overconsolidated Kaolin clay (Prashant & Penumadu, 2004a, 2005). The specimens were subjected to various proportional loading stress paths by maintaining a constant strain rate along major principal direction. The specimens experienced strain localization at peak shear stress level before shearing to large deformations. In many cases, a sudden change in the stress-strain relationship was observed at the failure locations, which was primarily induced by the displacement discontinuities developed within the specimen. The post-failure response is defined as the critical state where a deforming soil element experiences large shear deformation under constant deviatoric stress. In most of the constitutive theories of frictional materials, the pre-failure elasto-plastic deformation is modelled by considering its strong relationship with failure stress state parameters. It is assumed that when a soil element is subjected to shear loading, it yields consistently following a hardening rule and smoothly reaches a stress state where continuously decreasing shear stiffness becomes zero, which the authors define as a reference state. The true triaxial experimental data presented in this paper suggests that the strain localization occurs during hardening of clay, which leads to a sudden failure response within the specimen. It should be noted that the use of flexible boundary conditions minimizes the interference of external boundaries on the specimen deformation. In the absence of localized deformation, the soil element may sustain higher stress and eventually reach the reference state. In such a condition, it is important to distinguish between the definition of the

failure stress state and the reference state of clay, and this is the focus of the current paper. In sudden failure conditions, the reference surface corresponds to a virtual state of stress that is possible if the specimen does not experience deformation localizations. A method of determining the state of stress at reference state is presented by using an approach describing the stress-strain relationship using hyperbolic functions. The shape of reference surface and failure surface for Kaolin clay is evaluated in 3-D stress space using the true triaxial data. The shapes of these surfaces, especially in the deviatoric plane, are found to be significantly different.

2 Experiments and Results

A series of flexible-boundary true-triaxial undrained tests were performed on remoulded cubical specimens of Kaolin clay. The proportional loading during undrained shearing was applied by controlling the strain rate in the major principal direction, which coincided with the axis of prior Ko loading during specimen preparation. The behaviour of normally consolidated and moderately over consolidated (with over consolidation ratio, OCR = 5) clay was studied at five different values of intermediate principal stress ratio, b = 0, 0.25, 0.5, 0.75 and 1.0.

b=

3 2 1 3

(1)

The complete experimental data and the relevant analysis were published earlier in Prashant & Penumadu (2004a, 2005). The triaxial compression (b = 0) tests were also performed for three additional OCR values, OCR = 1.5, 2, and 10. During all the tests performed in this study the preconsolidation pressure before shearing was constant at 275 kPa. A part of the data from these experimental studies has been used in this paper concentrating on the significance of the reference state. Figure 1 shows the stress-strain relationships and the pore pressure evolution in terms of the change in mean effective stress for b = 0, 0.5, and 1.0. For the following analysis, the mean effective stress p, deviator stress q, and the shear strain q were calculated from the general invariant expressions: (2) +3 ) 3 p = ( 1 + 2

200 160 120 80 40 0 0

OCR = 1 OCR = 5

160 120 80

OCR = 1

Deviator Stress, q (kPa)

Failure Point b=0 b = 0.5 b=1

-p' (kPa)

40 0 0 -40 OCR = 5 0.05 0.1

Failure Point b=0 b = 0.5 b=1 0.15 0.2

0.05

0.1 Shear Strain, eq

0.15

0.2

-80 Shear Strain, eq

(a)

(b)

Figure 1. Stress-strain relationship and change in mean effective stress during true triaxial undrained shearing with b = 0, 0.5, and 1.0

q=

) + ( 2 3 ) + ( 3 1 ) ( 1 2
2 2

(3)

q =

1 2 2 2 2 ( 1 2 ) + ( 2 3 ) + ( 3 1 ) 3

(4)

Here, 1, 2, and 3 are the major, intermediate and minor principal stresses measured along three axes of the cubical specimen, where 1, 2, and 3 are the corresponding normal strains.

2.1 Specimen uniformity

Mandeville and Penumadu (2004) performed a water-content-analysis on three different cubical specimens of the remoulded Kaolin clay used in this study to evaluate the uniformity in water content across the specimen. The 102 mm cubical specimen was divided into 64 smaller samples and the water content distribution was evaluated. The average water content was found to be 42%, with an observed range of 40.03% to 42.88%. Variation of the water content at the end of isotropic consolidation in the true triaxial device was less than 1% thus indicating good uniformity of density at a length scale that is measurable easily using moisture content.

2.2 Strain Localization

Strain localization in a deforming soil specimen is a known phenomenon that occurs due to material imperfections and local disturbances during shear loading. At and beyond the onset of localized deformations the soil elements may proceed to catastrophic failure unless there are some external boundary conditions that can counter the large deformations. Prashant and Penumadu (2004a, c) demonstrated that the cubical specimens of Kaolin clay experienced localized deformations during true triaxial undrained shearing. In most cases, a thin shear band type and/or defused localization (local bulging in the specimen) were observed at the peak shear stress location. Post-localization, the specimens experienced large shear deformations under constant shear stress, which could be described as the critical state. Therefore, the failure location during these tests was defined at the peak shear stress location, as shown in Fig. 1.

2.3 Smooth Failure vs. Sudden Failure Conditions

During the experimental study, it was observed that when the cubical specimens of Kaolin clay were subjected to a variety of anisotropic stress paths, in most cases, the specimen experienced an abrupt loss of the shear stiffness at failure, and showed a sudden failure due to localized deformations. The stress-strain relationship reached the failure smoothly and showed a sudden change in the slope at failure. In absence of the localized deformations, the soil elements might have sheared to higher stress states before reaching the critical state, which the authors define as the reference stress state. Figure 2 shows a typical example of the smooth and sudden failure response of soil in the stress-strain relationships, and illustrates the meaning of reference state in sudden failure conditions. It was observed that the significance of the sudden failure response varied with different configurations of anisotropic stress paths, as indicated by the stress-strain relationships shown in Fig. 1a. In this study, the use of all-around flexible boundaries during true-triaxial tests allowed the specimen to freely deform under various stress boundary conditions and helped identify the onset of strain localization. If the specimen boundaries used during testing were rigid and/or frictional, the strain discontinuities might not show a sudden change in the stress-strain response. Likewise, a sudden change in stress-strain relationship could only be seen with a greater number of data points collected during the test.

 Reference State

Smooth Failure Sudden Failure

Figure 2. Smooth failure and Sudden failure conditions In presence of the strain localizations within the specimens, the global loading and displacement measurements can not describe the representative stress and strain state of the specimen; and therefore, this information can not be used directly to develop the constitutive equations for modelling the mechanical behaviour of soil. The use of flexible boundaries allows for measuring the true stress state within the specimen even when the localization has occurred; however, the strain information can only be obtained by measuring the local displacement profile.

2.4 Significance of Reference Stress State

Figure 1 shows that the stress-strain relationship before failure was essentially identical for tests at all the b-values. The specimens sheared with b 0.5 showed sudden failure response (an abrupt change in the shear stiffness) due to the large strain localization at peak shear stress level, and the shear stiffness just before the failure was significantly higher than zero. Strain localization may have a relationship with the constitutive properties of soil; however, it is also largely influenced by many other factors such as specimen boundary, material imperfections, etc. As a result, the failure conditions were significantly influenced by the change in b-values for both normally consolidated and moderately overconsolidated Kaolin clay. Therefore, the observed shear stiffness variation and failure conditions were associated with two separate phenomena. This experimental observation is important to be considered for developing a suitable constitutive model for such clay. The Critical state concept has been widely used to describe the constitutive behaviour of clays. In most of these theories, it is assumed that on application of shear loading the material yield surface is continuously changing its size following a hardening rule associated with the incremental plastic deformations. Eventually, the stress state smoothly reaches a critical state where the soil deforms continuously at constant shear stress level with no change in volumetric response. However, due to strain localizations, soil elements may show early failure and reach the critical state before the shear stiffness decreases to zero i.e. before reaching the reference stress state. These sudden failure conditions (caused by strain localization) might be independent of the soil properties defining the pre-failure elasto-plastic yielding of clay. Based on the above experimental observations, one can say that a constitutive theory developed for such clay should define its formulation of material-yielding independent of the failure surface. A reference surface, bounding the ultimate yield surface for zero shear stiffness and/or defining the shear hardening of material, has been commonly used in a variety of elasto-plasticity models; however, these theories do not differentiate between the reference surface and the failure surface. From the experimental observations in this study, the failure surface may be defined as a lower bound for the reference surface (especially in deviatoric plane), and that would ensure the applicability of the definition of failure at peak deviatoric stress. These surfaces will be identical for smooth failure conditions. Using the concept of reference surface different from the failure surface,

the authors proposed a constitutive model for normally to overconsolidated clays in an earlier publication (Prashant and Penumadu 2004b); however, the formulation was described only for the triaxial compression conditions. It is apparent from the above discussion that the reference state concept would play a more significant role in describing the model in 3-D stress space, which is further emphasized in the discussion hereafter.

3 Method of Determining the Reference Stress state

Since the reference state is a virtual state of stress in sudden failure conditions, it can not be determined directly from the experimental data. Using a curve fitting method, the stress-strain relationship and excess pore pressure evolution can be extrapolated to higher shear strain level. Based on the extrapolated curves, one can determine the stress state corresponding to zero shear stiffness at a finite shear strain value. It is to be noted that the use of curve fitting method may require some engineering judgement, and the determined reference state shall only be viewed as an approximate value. In another approach, the analyst may choose to obtain the reference stress state purely by judgement using graphical extrapolation method by considering gradual decrease in the stiffness of soil during continuous shearing. Kondner (1963), and later Duncan and Chang (1970) used a single hyperbolic function to fit the stress-strain relationships for cohesive soils. However, the use of single hyperbola has the disadvantage of indicating infinite shear strain at the reference state, and the corresponding shear stress may be unrealistically high. Griffiths and Prevost (1990) modified the single hyperbolic function to fit the stress-strain relationship within a finite range of strain. The modified function (Eq. 5) was relatively complex; however, it was a pragmatic solution.

q = q1
Where,

a +

q1

( a + ult )

1 1+ + qo ult 1+

(5)

q1 =

1 2 qult qo b + b b qult qo b 2 1+ 4 qult qo 1+ q , and b = 2G a= o ult 2Go

Here, qo is initial deviatoric stress, Go is initial shear stiffness, ult is shear strain corresponding to zero shear stiffness, and is a curve fitting parameter. Using the modified approach, the hyperbolic function was used to represent the stress-strain relationships observed during the cubical triaxial tests on normally and overconsolidated Kaolin clay. It was assumed that the reference state would be reached at a shear strain value of 25%, which was determined based on a regression analysis. Figure 3 shows some typical examples of the curve fitting of the stress-strain relationships. Since the cubical specimens were sheared from an initially isotropic effective stress state, the initial value of deviatoric stress q was zero. However, use of hyperbolic or modified hyperbolic function was not able to fit the whole curve when the initial deviatoric stress qo was assumed to be zero. Since the objective was to determine the reference state and the interest was only in the later part of the curve, a positive value of qo was assumed to obtain the best fit curve for the later part of the curve, as shown in Fig. 3. By using the double hyperbolic functions, the need of a non-zero qo can be eliminated without compromising the accuracy of the fit. However, the formulation of double hyperbolic function with the constraint of zero shear stiffness at a finite strain value becomes relatively complex. Considering the good fit obtained for the later part of the curve using the modified single hyperbolic function, the double hyperbolic function is not expected to show a significant difference in the obtained values of deviatoric stress at the reference state. Therefore, the option of double hyperbolic function was discarded in this study. Since the specimens were sheared under undrained conditions, it is necessary to determine the excess pore pressure or the

180 150 120 90 60 30 0 0

b=1 Reference State (For both b=0 and b=1) b=0 OCR = 1

180 150 120 90 60 30 0 b=1

b=0

Deviator Stress, q (kPa)

Deviator Stress, q (kPa)

Reference State OCR = 5

Experimental Hyperbolic fit line

Experimental Hyperbolic fit line

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

0.05

0.1

0.15

0.2

0.25

Shear Strain, eq

Shear Strain, eq

(a)

(b)

Figure 3. Method of determining reference stress state using hyperbolic functions mean effective stress at the reference state. This is because the soil is a pressure dependent material, and shear stiffness and strength of a soil element depends on the applied mean effective stress. For all the cubical triaxial data, the mean effective stress at reference stress state was determined using the same approach that was used for the stress-strain relationships.

4 Failure surface and Reference State in Deviatoric Plane

For an isotropic material, the shear strength and reference state shear stress may be assumed constant in a deviatoric plane, and the corresponding surfaces would assume a circular shape in this plane similar to the extended von-Mises failure surface (J2 = q2/3 is constant for a deviatoric plane). In the presence of anisotropy, the strength of soil has been commonly described as a function of the invariants of the effective stress tensor. Figure 4 shows the strength data obtained

z OCR=1

z OCR=5

I3 surface Experimental reference surface

J2' surface I3 surface Experimental reference surface Reference state Failure point

J2' surface

Figure 4. Failure and reference stress states in deviatoric plane

from the series of undrained true triaxial tests (for different b-values) performed on the normally consolidated (OCR = 1) and moderately overconsolidated (OCR = 5) specimens of Kaolin clay. This figure also shows the data points corresponding to reference stress state. Although, the significance of sudden failure caused by the strain localization varied with the b-value, the shear failure stress state can be reasonably described using the I3 = constant (for a deviatoric plane) surface for both the OCR values. (6) . 3 I 3 = 1. 2 The I3 and J2 surfaces at each deviatoric plane have been calibrated using the data from triaxial compression (b = 0) tests. The reference stress states followed a different pattern than the failure points in deviatoric plane. The surface connecting the reference stress states for different b-values lies between the I3 and J2 surfaces, as shown in Fig. 4, for the kaolin clay used in this study. The deviation of reference surface from J2 surface in Fig. 4 indicates some influence of the stress anisotropy; however, the shear strength behavior shows much stronger influence.

5 Failure surface and Reference Surface in q-p' space

As mentioned earlier in the experimental program that the triaxial compression tests (b = 0) were performed at five overconsolidation stages corresponding to OCR = 1, 1.5, 2, 5, 10. The reference states were determined for each test using the method described earlier. Figure 5 shows the undrained shear strength and corresponding reference stress states for various OCR values. Figure 5a shows that within the range of presented data the reference surface can be reasonably assumed to have a similar shape as the failure surface in q-p space. In engineering practice the undrained shear strength (Su) of overconsolidated clay is often normalized by the strength of normally consolidated clay (Ladd and Foott 1974, Mayne 1979) as power function of the OCR value, as shown in Eq. 7.

)OC ( Su vo ( Su vo ) NC

= OCR o

(7)

Here, vo is the initial effective vertical stress, and o is a soil constant. In this study of consolidated undrained shear tests, vo was the pre-shear isotropic consolidation pressure. In Fig. 5b, Eq. 7 is plotted on a semi log scale using the undrained shear strength data from this study. The normalization of reference state shear stress using the same equation is also included in Fig. 5b. The failure points and reference states both follow an identical logarithmic relationship with OCR

Deviatoric Stress, q (kPa)

200 160 120 80 40 0 0

Reference stress state Failure stress state

10

Reference stress state Failure stress state

Su vo OC Su vo NC
40 80 120 160
1

y=x0.9 x o = 0.9 1 10

Mean Effective Stress, p' (kPa)

Overconsolidation Ratio, OCR

(a)

(b)

Figure 5. (a) Failure and reference stress states in q-p space, (b) Normalization of undrained shear strength and reference stress states for overconsolidation level

value, and show a value of parameter o = 0.9. This relationship again supports that the assumption of the same shape for reference surface and failure surface in q-p space was a reasonable choice.

6 Conclusions
During an experimental study of the true triaxial behaviour of Kaolin clay, the cubical specimens showed an abrupt loss of the shear stiffness at failure location due to localized deformations within the specimens. This sudden failure response of the soil was discussed in this paper, which originated the need for defining a virtual stress state corresponding to the expected failure location in the absence of strain localizations. This stress state was termed as the reference state, where the shear stiffness gradually decreased to zero during continuous shearing of the soil element. A method of determining the reference stress state was presented using the measured data from this study. It was observed that a reference surface, defining the pre-failure yielding of soil, should be separated from the failure surface in sudden failure conditions. The reference surface and failure surface were observed to have significantly different shapes in general stress space.

7 Acknowledgements
Financial Support from National Science Foundation (NSF) through grants CMS-9872618 and CMS-0296111 is gratefully acknowledged. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of NSF.

8 References
Duncan, J.M., Chang, C.Y. 1970. Nonlinear analysis of stress and strain in soils. J. Soil Mech. Found. Div., ASCE, 96(SM5), 1629-1653. Griffiths, D.V., Prevost, J.H. 1990. Stress strain curve generation from triaxial parameters. Int. J. Num. Anal. Methods in Geomech., Technical note on practical applications, 14(8), 587-594. Kondner, R.L. 1963. Hyperbolic stress strain response: cohesive soils. J. Soil Mech. Found. Div., ASCE, 89(SM1), 115-143. Ladd, C.C., Foott, R. 1974. New Design Procedure for stability of Soft Clays. Journal of Geotechnical Engineering, ASCE, 100(7), 763-786. Mandeville, D., Penumadu, D. 2004. True Triaxial Testing System for Clay with Proportional-Integral-Differential Control. ASTM, Geotechnical Testing Journal, 27(2), GTJ11756, 1-12. Mayne, P.W. 1979. Discussion of Normalized Deformation parameters for Kaolin By H. G. Poulos. Geotechnical Testing Journal. 1(2), 102-106. Prashant A., Penumadu D. 2004a. Effect of intermediate principal stress on overconsolidated kaolin clay. J. Geotech. and Geoenv. Eng., 130(3), 284-292. Prashant, A, Penumadu, D. 2004b. Modeling the effect of overconsolidation on shear behavior of cohesive soils. Proc. 9th Symp. Num. Models in Geomech., Ottawa(Canada), 131-137. Prashant, A, Penumadu, D. 2004c. Experimental analysis of yielding and strain localization of moderately overconsolidated kaolin clay. Proc. 17th ASCE Engrg. Mech. Conference. In CD, Paper No. 264, 1-8. Prashant A., Penumadu D. 2005. A Laboratory Study of Normally Consolidated Kaolin Clay. Can. Geotech. J., in print, 1-32.