Dec 2020 Drain and Undrained

Shear Stress in Soil

Mechanic Retaining
Structure

By: Nabaz Nooralddin Othman

BSC. IN GEOTECHNICAL ENGINEERING
The Question:
“The total stress analysis should only be used in temporary works. But even for these
works, you should be cautious in relying on the undrained shear strength. Recall that
the undrained shear strength is not a fundamental soil parameter. It depends on the
initial void ratio or confining pressure. A total stress analysis should be used in
conjunction with an effective stress analysis for retaining structures supporting fine-
grained soils”.
My Answer:
Retaining structure is critical and should be design with proper detailing accuracy
in soil and material structure.
According to father of soil Terzaghi, ‘Soil mechanics is the application of the laws
of mechanics and hydraulics to engineering problems dealing with sediments and
other unconsolidated accumulations of solid particles produced by the mechanical
and chemical disintegration of rock, regardless of whether or not they contain an
admixture of organic constituents’.
Material like soil have two main condition of design, drained and undrained shear
strength. For case of drained water can easily drained from soil and escaped, while
for undrained condition water inside soil Skelton cannot easily escape, this
phenomenon is due to rate of loading which is much rapid than drained and other
factor can influence that rate such as type of soil (i.e. gravel, sand, clay…),
geological formation, and rate of loading.
In other word we could say that in shear strength of soil we have two type of
conditions: a) short term condition- b) long term condition. A very basic soil
engineering is effective stress which was proposed by Terzaghi (1936) as
𝜎 ′ = 𝜎 − 𝑢 where 𝜎 is total stress and 𝑢 is pore water pressure.
When we design on short term condition we cannot estimate amount of pore water
pressure that generated by existing soil because of its sudden load, and by not
escaping water pressure in short time it become undrained condition, this type of
condition in soil had more factor of safety in designing structure because of
unknown of 𝑢 and assuming as zero. It is also needed less time to predict effective
stress and cost-less. That is why in undrained condition we can rely on total stress
as mentioned before the basic Terzaghi equation become 𝜎 ′ = 𝜎 because pore
water pressure is no longer available, this case is also available for coarse grain soil
such as sand and gravel.
For long term condition we rely on effective stress 𝜎 ′ because water pressure is
known and can predict accurately, but its costly effect and needed time to drain all
that water pressure under load and this condition is occur mainly in fine grained
soil like clay and silt.
As undrained shear strength is not a fundamental soil parameter it depends on
voids that water can easily drain or not, varying over depth as a function of in-situ
confining stress at a given depth so larger confining stress reduces void ratio over
the historical time, this is why there are several correlations available for
determination of undrained shear strength from initial void ratio, water
content/plasticity index, and historical effective confining pressure.
As a result, it is unwise-able to design geotechnical structures and analysis under
short-term undrained condition in tern of total stress rather than effective-stress,
one reason is initial pore water pressure generated by loading of construction and
unloading process in fine grained soil i.e. clay is difficult to predict.