PRPPG7000: Academic Writing

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NAME: Bruno Augusto Yoshioka DATE: 29/07/2020

PROGRAMA: Mestrado INSTITUTION: Universidade Estadual de Maringá - UEM

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The shear strength is intimately related to the safety of geotechnical constructions. The
contribution of soil suction to shear strength generally results in a significant increase in bearing
capacity and an increase in the factor of safety of slopes. However, long periods of rain increase
significantly the degree of soil saturation, reducing soil suction and consequently the shear strength.
Therefore, the knowledge about the unsaturated shear strength behavior may provide the engineer a
significantly improvement ability to analyze practical problems and ensure the safety of the
geotechnical construction.

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TITLE: Shear strength of a clayey soil evolved from basalt, compacted, under different suction
conditions

Compacted clayey soil has been widely used in the geotechnical infrastructure constructions in
Brazil, since the micro aggregations existent in those soils, a remarkable tropical soils characteristic,
promotes a great applicability to this soil. However, those micro aggregations provide soils with a high
void ratio, so that even after long rain periods, the saturation condition is not reached, but significantly
increases the degree of soil saturation, reducing soil suction and consequently the shear strength.
Extensive research has been carried out on the shear strength of unsaturated soils. Fredlund et
al. (1978) suggested that shear strength of an unsaturated soil could be described using two independent
stress state variables, the net normal stress ( σ −ua ) and the suction (ua −uw ). Therefore, it is possible to
use an extension of the Mohr-Coulomb envelope (i.e. a three-dimensional envelope), considering the
normal stress and suction on the shear strength of the soil. The rate of increase of normal stress and
suction in shear strength is represented by ϕ ' and ϕ b, respectively. Initially, the surface between these
two envelopes was considered planar. However, the accumulation of published experiment data on
unsaturated soil shear strength has shown significant nonlinearity in the shape of the shear strength
envelope with respect to soil suction (Gan, 1986; Escario and Sáez, 1986; Fredlund et al. 1987; Gan,
Fredlund and Rahardjo, 1988; Marinho et al., 2013; Patil et al. 2017).
The contribution of soil suction to the shear strength generally results in a significant increase in
bearing capacity and in the factor of safety slopes. While shear strength studies have led to a deeper
understanding of mechanical behavior of unsaturated soils, the measurement of its property functions in
the laboratory is costly and time consuming. Consequently, there has been an emphasis on the
estimation of unsaturated shear strength functions, in which most of these estimation equations
proposed have been related to the soil water characteristic curve – SWCC or the classification
properties of the soil (Fredlund et al. 1996; Vanapalli et al. 1996; Öberg and Sällfours, 1997, Bao et al.,
1998; Khalili and Khabbaz, 1998; Vilar, 2006; Sheng et al., 2008; Goh et al., 2010; Satyanaga and
Rahardjo, 2019).
When the unsaturated soil is in the compacted condition, its shear strength behavior is
significantly influenced by properties such as the moisture content, stress state and soil structure. Fine-
grained soil compacted at various initial water contents and to various densities produce different soils
with different mechanical behavior, due to differences in soil structure or aggregation which are related
to the moisture content, even though their mineralogy, plasticity, and texture are the same (Vanapalli et
al., 1996). Several studies have been conducted on the influence of soil structure in mechanical
behavior of compacted unsaturated soils. The moisture content has presented significant influence on
the unsaturated shear strength of compacted soils. Specimens of residual soils compacted at dry of
optimum have presented lower shear strength, due to the lower effective wet contact area for matric
suction to contribute towards the shear strength, which can be attributed to the influence of soil
structure (Marinho et al., 2013). The initial compacted fabric has shown relevant importance since it is
not destroyed in unsaturated soils, because suction is able to support and maintain the aggregated
double structure of compacted unsaturated soils, which explain the water retention behavior of
compacted specimens with different initial void ratios (Mendes and Toll, 2016; Gao et al., 2019).
Therefore, the performance of a compacted unsaturated soil, mainly in tropical regions, must be
investigated taking account the diversity of possible situations in the field over time, seeking to
evaluate the instability of the structure generated at the time of compaction, the suction modification
and the variability of its mechanical behavior.
This paper presents a study of the unsaturated shear strength of a compacted clayey soil evolved
from basalt, typical of the northern region of Paraná, by conducting several consolidated drained (CD)
triaxial tests. The triaxial testing was performed under suction controlled conditions, on samples
compacted in three different initial water contents, namely, dry of optimum, optimum and wet of
optimum conditions. The samples corresponding to the dry and wet of optimum were compacted with
the same density, and consequently, the same void ratio, to evaluate the influence of soil structure in
the shear strength. The shear strength behavior of the soil under saturated conditions was also
determined by consolidated drained (CD) triaxial tests. The experimental results of the present study
were used to determine the failure envelope, the shear strength parameters for the three moisture
conditions, and to evaluate the influence of the matric suction and the soil structure on the shear
strength of the soil tested. Additionally, the applicability of the unsaturated shear strength prediction
equations proposed by Vanapalli et al. (1996), Khalili and Khabbaz (1998) and Vilar (2006) was
verified.