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    Properties of Rockfill Material

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF or read online from Scribd
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    9 views11 pages

    Properties of Rockfill Material

    Uploaded by

    pk
    Properties of Rockfill Material

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
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    8612 January, 1972 Mt Journal of the SOIL MECHANICS AND FOUNDATIONS DIVISION Proceedings of the American Society of Civil Engineers EVALUATION OF PROPERTIES OF ROCKFILL MATERIALS By N. Dean Maracht,! A. M. ASCE, Clarence K. Ctan,? tand H. Bolton Seed,* Members, ASCE, INTRODUCTION ‘The two most important factors Influencing the design of a rockfll struc ture are the shear strength and the compressibility of the rockfil! material, No stability analysts, regardless of how Intricate and theoretically exact It may be, can be wectul for deoign if an incorrect eotimation of shearing ‘strength of the construction material has been made. To arrive at any mean- {Ingful soll property, the laboratory test should simulate the fleld condition 26 closely as posatble, as le generally done in the case of earth dame, Howeve: materials comprising a rockfill dam may contain particles of a few feet in which for accurate testing, would require triaxial spectmer formidable dimensions. ‘Because testing of triaxial specimens of the prototype rockfll! mat Un not possible in many cases, techniques have been developed to evaluate the properties of fleld rockfill materials on the basis of the informations from laboratory trlazial epecimens containing the small fraction of the field ma terial. One auch technique, described by Zeller and Wallimann (27), Involves the acalping of the fleld material for use in the laboratory specimens. An- other technique proposed by Lowe (18) Involves modeling of the grain-size latributlon of the fleld material, and forming laboratory specimens with erain-etze distribution curve exactly parallel to that of the fleld materia Described briefly herein Is the theoretical and experimental basis for the ‘modeling techalque and presents the results of Investigations on the proper Hes of rockfill materials performed at the Rockfill Testing Facility of the “Woie —Diacussion open itil inne 1, 1972, To extend th closing date one mooth, a writen roquest must be filed withthe Executive Director, ASCE. This paper in part of the copyrigited Jouranl of the Soll Mechanics and Foundations Division, Proceedings ‘of the Amerlean Soclety of Civil Engineers, Vol. 98, No. SMI, January, 1972, Mant script was submitted for review for possible ubllcation on June 23, 1971 Be, Engr., Converse, Davie ahd Aasoclates, Pasadena, Call ‘Research Engr. and Lect, Unly. of California at Berkeley, Call 2 Prof, of Ch. Engrg., Univ. of Callforala at Berkeley, Call 95 96 January, 1972 SM 1 University of California at Berkeley, using triaxial test specimens ranging from 28 fn to 96 In tn diameter. PREVIOUS INVESTIGATIONS Theorelical Considerations Most of the theoretical conskderatlons bith- ecto eaported in te erature with seqard tothe elfcta of particle size are Teed Ge Herte's formula (2)- Herts found tat the maximam stre8, Om, the contact of two bodies can be expresued 88 om = 0.930 [par {Bat Fa?! in which R, and R, = the radit of curvature of the two bodies in contact; P= the compressive force acting on them; and E = the modulus of elasticity for 2a “TABLE 1.-SUMMARY OF PREVIOUS INVESTIGATION ON PARTICLE SIZE EFFECT EEE EEE ‘iarinan source perce nize Cconstion Type of tot o ‘a o hop 1) 1A tn Partco ote dove not affect ange of Direct tear ‘iterea rion. ewe (4) rym Anal of neraal rcton mroases a8 ied soar sath rve tovoeon vette ota. 24) | 02 Parle ats doo not fect ante of ‘Tait shear ‘eras freton. owe 20) 1mm ¢,, merous parte ee ‘ing eton Penn Leste 9) ain of nara rltion Increases 28 ‘elit shear article ze dooreases. rintgattce @) | 2mm Anal of tteraal frltlon inrensoe ‘intl shear acl nse docrnsee areal (7) tin. Angle of neal frltion Increases ‘Truc shear ticle ese decreases. tee,etat.c1oy | 3m Compression increase an the par~ Hiata compression | eal are norton, amagatt 7) | 260 mm : ‘Triaxial compression the material. A number of assumptions have been made in the derivation of By. 1, the most Important of which are that the materials of both objects are ansurned to be perfectly elastic with equal modull and that Potsson's ratio for the test material has a value of 0.3. ‘An extension of Eq, 1 and ite appltcation to particles having perfect geo- metrical similarity (16) shows that for perfectly elastic contacte the values of contact stress and strain are Independent of the particle size. Data by Horn land Deere (8) also indleate that the coefficient of friction for quartz, which te Mt ROCKFILL MATERIALS 97 4 highly elastic material, 1s constant and Independent of such parameters as ‘area and normal load. On the basis of preceding arguments, It appears that the frictional and deformational characteristics of assemblage of particles should not be size dependent, provided that the contacts are not stressed be: tic mite, ae previously noted by Terzaght (22), Bishop (2) and Lowe (15). ‘On the other hand, on the basis of adhesion theory and plastic deformation of contacts, Bowden and Tabor (4) showed that except for diamond and some Grades of rubber, all contacts deform plastically until the true contact area fn equal to the load divided by the yleld strength of the material. They also showed that for such materials the coeffictent of friction Is a material prop- tty and independent of all other dimensional paramete Experimental Considerations —The findings based on the experimental in- vestigations, however, are notunanimous, Table 1 presents some conclusions Concerning the effect of particle size on soll strength and compressibility based on laboratory test results. Some of the contradictions may have been Teoulted from testing or modeling errors. However, it 1s clear that on the ‘basis of these findings, the engineer in charge of the design of» rocktll! dam would have no logical and conclusive means to assess the strength and com- ressibility of the actual rockfil) material on the basis of laboratory test re- alte which are aeually performed on materials consisting of much smaller particl ‘The object of the tests covered herein was to provide further experimental data showing the effects of modeling of the gradation curves on the strength fand deformation characteristice of rockfill materials, and to Investigate the possiallity of predicting the angle of internal frletlon of the actual rackf ill foaterial in a dam with a aatiaiactory degreeof accuracy and confidence from the reoults of teste performed on modeled materials. ‘TESTING PROGRAM AND MATERIALS ‘The testing program chosen to achleve the aforementioned objectiv« slatedot three serlesof isotropically consolidated, drained triaxial compres ‘sion teat on typical rockfill materials, Each series consisted of at least four teate on specimens having diameters of 36 n., 12 n., and 2.8 in. The four teste for each specimen size were performed uaing effective confining pres ‘sures of 30 pst, 140 pst, 420 pat and 650 pol ‘A brief description of the characteristics of the rock particles and the gradation of each of the rockfill materials used 1s presented in the following paragraphs. Due to space limitation the particle crushing aspects of these teste are reported in a separate paper. ‘Pyramid Dam Material,—This rock"ill material was produced by quarry biaating, and the Individual particles were very angular. The rock iteelf 1s an argillite, a fine-grained sedimentary rock with distinct parallel bedding planes. ‘The individual rock particles were comparatively weak and anlso- trople inthetr strength properties. The specific gravity forthe rock particles ‘was 2.62 and did not vary for dilferent particle sizes. The fleld grain-size distribution for the material Le shown tn Fig. 1(a). The grain-size distribu- ton carves for the materials used In the 36-in. dlam, 12-In. diam and 2.8-in. lam specimens are aleo shown in Fig. 1(a). These grain-size distribution curves were made to be parallel to the fleld gradation curve, and moreover January, 1972 M1 err =F | Hef LE |

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