• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.5C
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• pp.209-218
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• 2010

In residual soils, large particles such as rock fragments or gravel are surrounded by sand or clay. The strength of such granular mixtures can be controlled by the concentration of fine or coarse grains. The percentage by weight, size or shape of gravel in the mixture that can control the strength of the mixture has not been clearly determined for various granular mixtures. In this study, the effect of dispersed gravels on the shear characteristics of sand was evaluated. Large and small gravels were inserted in the middle of each layer with moist Nakdong River sand and compacted into a cylindrical sample with five equal layers. Embedded gravel ratios by weight were 0, 3, 9, and 14%. After consolidation, a series of undrained triaxial compression tests was performed on Nakdong River sand with dispersed gravels. Maximum deviator stresses of the Nakdong River sand with large gravels decrease up to 38% as a percentage of embedded gravels increases. Such strength degradation decreases as a confining pressure increases. The maximum deviator stress increases as the percentage by weight of small gravel increases; at 3 or 9% of gravel weight it slightly increases but at 14% of gravel weight it increases up to 34%.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.5
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• pp.145-159
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• 2004

The conventional method for assessment of liquefaction potential proposed by Seed and Idriss has been widely used in most countries because of simplicity of tests. Even though various data such as stress, strain, stress path, and excess pore water pressure can be obtained from the dynamic test, especially, two simple experimental data such as the maximum deviatoric stress and the number of cycles at liquefaction have been used in the conventional assessment. In this study, a new detailed assessment for liquefaction potential to reflect both characteristics of real earthquake motion and dynamic soil resistance is proposed and verified. In the assessment, the safety factor of the liquefaction potential at a given depth of a site can be obtained by the ratio of a resistible cumulative plastic shear strain determined through the performance of the conventional cyclic test and a driving cumulative plastic shear strain calculated from the shear strain time history through the ground response analysis. The last point to cumulate the driving plastic shear strain to initiate soil liquefaction is important for this assessment. From the result of cyclic triaxial test using real earthquake motions, it was concluded that liquefaction under the impact-type earthquake loads would initiate as soon as a peak loading signal was reached. The driving cumulative plastic shear strain, therefore, can be determined by adding all plastic shear strains obtained from the ground response analysis up to the peak point. Through the verification of the proposed assessment, it can be concluded that the proposed assessment for liquefaction potential can be a progressive method to reflect both characteristics of the unique soil resistance and earthquake parameters such as peak earthquake signal, significant duration time, earthquake loading type, and magnitude.