Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

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Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/soildyn

Characterization of the small-strain dynamic behaviour of silty sands; MARK

contribution of silica non-plastic fines content
⁎
Meghdad Payana, Kostas Senetakisb, , Arman Khoshghalba, Nasser Khalilia
a
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, UNSW Australia, Sydney, Australia
b
Department of Architecture and Civil Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong

A R T I C L E I N F O A B S T R A C T

Keywords: Dynamic properties of soils at very small strains are of particular interest for geotechnical engineers for the
Small-strain shear modulus characterization of the behaviour of earth structures subjected to a variety of static and dynamic stress states.
Damping ratio This study reports on the small-strain dynamic properties of silty sand with particular emphasis on the effect of
Fines content non-plastic fines content on the small-strain shear modulus (Gmax ) and material damping (Ds, min ). Several clean
Resonant column sands with a wide range of grain size distribution and particle shape are mixed with different percentages of a
Silty sand
silica non-plastic silt. The laboratory created samples are subjected to torsional resonant column tests with small-
strain shear moduli and damping ratios measured along an isotropic stress path. It is shown that at low per-
centages of fines content, there is a significant difference between the dynamic properties of the various samples
due to the different characteristics of the sand portion of the mixtures. However this variance diminishes as the
fines content increases and the soil behaviour becomes mainly silt-dominant, rendering no significant influence
of different sand properties on the small-strain shear modulus and damping ratio. Using the experimental results,
new expressions for the prediction of small-strain shear modulus and small-strain damping ratio of non-plastic
silty sands are developed accounting for the percentage of silt and the characteristics of the sand portion.

1. Introduction and particle shape [15,26,34,6]. In addition, most of the experimental

Dynamic properties of soils are essential in earthquake engineering
design and the geophysical characterization of sediments. Of particular
interest in soil dynamics modelling is the behaviour of geo-materials at
very small strains, i.e. below 10−3%. In this range of behaviour, the
dynamic properties are commonly expressed in terms of the small-strain
shear modulus (Gmax ) and damping ratio (Ds, min ). Precise prediction of
Gmax and Ds, min have been the focus of many previous research studies in
the literature. Based on the common practice in geotechnical earth-
quake engineering, for example following the recommendations of
seismic codes, the classification of soils for dynamic characterization
and the design of geo-structures, requires the knowledge of soil stiffness
and material damping [13,19]. Soil stiffness is also important in li-
quefaction analyses when the shear wave velocity is used as the
quantity to assess empirically the liquefaction susceptibility of sedi-
ments, while stiffness and material damping are both required prop-
erties in soil-structure interaction analyses.
For clean sands, there is a consensus in the literature about the
dependency of small-strain shear modulus to void ratio and confining
pressure [12,22,26,33–35,40] as well as the grain size characteristics
data and empirical models in the literature show that small-strain
damping ratio of clean sand primarily depends on the gradation and
particle shape of sand grains as well as the confining pressure applied to
the soil [4,22,33–35,27]. However, as far as the authors are aware,
there have been very few studies investigating the influence of fines
content on the small-strain dynamic properties of silty sands. Natural
soils composed of sand-silt mixtures are found widely, for example in
alluvial deposits, and often comprise major portions of colluvium de-
posits [25]. There is particular interest to understand the behaviour of
silty sand mixtures because of their relatively high compressibility and
liquefaction potential when found in a saturated state as well as due to
their common use in many regions as a remoulded geo-material for
construction of road bases and other transportation infrastructures.
With reference to silty sands, the studies performed by Iwasaki and
Tatsuoka [14], Salgado et al. [31], Thevanayagam and Liang [38],
Chien and Oh [5], Rahman et al. [28], Umberg [39], Goudarzy [9],
Choo and Burns [7] and Wichtmann et al. [41] have shown a significant
decrease in Gmax as the percentage of fines content increases and this
reduction was reflected in the fitting parameters of Gmax expression by
extending previous proposed models. The concept of skeleton void ratio

⁎
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: kostas.senetakis.cityu@gmail.com (K. Senetakis).

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.soildyn.2017.08.008
Received 12 December 2016; Received in revised form 11 August 2017; Accepted 11 August 2017
Available online 21 September 2017
0267-7261/ © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

Table 1
Properties of tested sands.

Sand name Gradation parameters Particle shape descriptors

d50 (mm) Cu R (MV) S (MV) ρ (MV) R (SD) S (SD) ρ (SD)

White sand 0.24 1.75 0.71 0.76 0.74 0.14 0.11 0.13
Crushed Blue sand 1 0.69 1.92 0.24 0.51 0.38 0.12 0.18 0.15
Crushed Blue sand 2 1.88 4.11 0.24 0.51 0.38 0.12 0.18 0.15

R: Roundness; S: Sphericity; ρ: Regularity; MV: Mean Value; SD: Standard Deviation.

Fig. 1. Particle size distribution curves of tested soils.

was used by Wichtmann et al. [41] and Choo and Burns [7] to char-
acterise the maximum shear modulus and shear wave velocity of sand-
fines mixtures, respectively. However, as discussed by Rahman et al.
[29], Lashkari [21] and Yang and Liu [42], the use of skeleton void
ratio may lead to underestimation of shear modulus values, soil
strength and steady state parameters especially at high percentages of
fines content. In the study performed by Yang and Liu [42], using both
resonant column and bender elements tests, it was shown that although
small-strain shear modulus decreases as fines content increases, no
discernible effect of the percentage of non-plastic fines on the sensi-
tivity of Gmax to confining pressure was observed. In the studies con-
ducted by Thevanayagam and Liang [38] and Rahman et al. [28], the
equivalent granular void ratio (e*), originally developed by Theva-
nayagam [37], was utilised to define a threshold fines content per-
centage and to correlate the shear wave velocity to the properties of the Fig. 2. SEM images of (a) White sand and (b) Crushed Blue sand 2.
mixture as well as the applied pressure. Recently, [10,11] investigated
experimentally the effect of non-plastic fines content on the small-strain
shear modulus of sand-silt mixtures and they captured this effect
adopting the concept of the equivalent granular void ratio. In parti-
cular, they used equivalent granular void ratio to present the variation
of Gmax with density and showed that Hardin equation is adequate for
predicting small-strain shear modulus of sand – silt mixtures if global
void ratio (e) is replaced by e* in the void ratio function.
In most of the aforementioned studies, the experiments have fo-
cused on one type of sand with a given gradation and particle shape. As
a result, the possible important role of the sand portion characteristics
on the behaviour of the mixtures was not studied in a systematic
manner in many of the previous studies and thus, boundaries and
transformation from the sand-dominant to the silt-dominant behaviour
could not be captured thoroughly. Consequently, the models proposed
were the extensions of previous expressions for clean sand with the
addition of the effect of fines content on a given type of sand. The
possible effects of grain size characteristics and particle shape were Fig. 3. SEM image of the non-plastic silica silt.
therefore overlooked. On the other hand, there is limited information in

233
M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

Fig. 4. Resonant column apparatus used in this study.

Table 2 developed to capture the significant influence of fines content on Gmax

Experimental program. and Ds, min of silty sands accounting for the grain shape and grain size
distribution characteristics of the sand portion of the mixtures.
Soil eo p' (kPa)

White sand 0.70 50–100–200–400–800

White sand + 5%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
2. Experimental works
White sand +10%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
White sand +20%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 2.1. Material used and preparation method
White sand +30%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
White sand + 5%FC 0.60, 0.65, 0.75 100
Three different sands with variable grain size distribution and par-
White sand +10%FC 0.60, 0.65, 0.75 100
White sand +20%FC 0.60, 0.65, 0.75 100 ticle shape were mixed with a silica non-plastic silt. The percentages of
White sand +30%FC 0.60, 0.65, 0.75 100 silt by dry mixture weight were equal to 0%, 5%, 10%, 20% and 30%.
Crushed Blue sand 1 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 The basic features of the sands used in the experiments are presented in
Crushed Blue sand 1 + 5%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 Table 1, and the particle size distribution curves of the soils are sche-
Crushed Blue sand 1 + 10%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
Crushed Blue sand 1 + 20%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
matically illustrated in Fig. 1. Both the sand and silt portions had a
Crushed Blue sand 1 + 30%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 specific gravity of solids equal to 2.65 determined from typical la-
Crushed Blue sand 2 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 boratory procedures [1].
Crushed Blue sand 2 + 5%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 In order to quantify the particle shape effect, the approach for
Crushed Blue sand 2 + 10%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
particle shape characterization originally proposed by Krumbein and
Crushed Blue sand 2 + 20%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800
Crushed Blue sand 2 + 30%FC 0.70 50–100–200–400–800 Sloss [20] and extended by Cho et al. [6] was used. Roundness (R),
Silica Silt 1 1.08 50–100–200–400–800 sphericity (S) and regularity (ρ) are used as the particle shape de-
Silica Silt 2 0.86 50–100–200–400–800 scriptors [32,6]. Regularity is the arithmetic average of sphericity and
Silica Silt 3 0.68 50–100–200–400–800 roundness. It has been shown that the particle shape effects may be
solely expressed and quantified through the variable ρ [32,6]. In order
to obtain the shape descriptors, adequate number of randomly-selected
the literature regarding the small-strain damping ratio of silty sands.
particles from the parent material were observed through an optical
One of the previous comprehensive works on small-strain damping
microscope as well as scanning electron microscope (SEM) imaging by
ratio of mixtures by Darendeli [8] focused on the effect of plasticity
two operators for the purpose of consistency [26]. The mean values
index on the behaviour of natural samples from sandy silts to clayey
(MV) and standard deviations (SD) of roundness, sphericity and reg-
soils, without a focus on the important role of the morphological and
ularity for each sand were obtained and the results are summarized in
grading characteristics of the sand portion of the mixtures. Conse-
Table 1. Based on this procedure, the White sand was classified as a soil
quently, no empirical model for the prediction of Ds, min of silty sands
with fairly rounded and spherical grains (Fig. 2a), whereas Crushed
has been developed so far accounting for the important role of particle
Blue sand 1 and Crushed Blue sand 2 (Fig. 2b) consisted of irregular
shape and grading of the sand portion.
shaped grains with similar particle shape descriptors but with different
In this study, sands with a wide range of grain size distribution and
grading characteristics. Note that the particle shape quantification was
particle shape are mixed with a non-plastic silica silt at different per-
conducted for the sand-size portion of the mixtures. The non-plastic
centages and densities. The laboratory created samples are subjected to
silica silt (Fig. 3) consisted of angular grains.
isotropic stress paths and the dynamic properties are captured through
The sands were first washed through No.200 sieve to remove all
low-amplitude torsional resonant column tests. The small-strain shear
fine-grained particles. Afterwards, the clean sands were oven-dried for
modulus and damping ratio of different samples from silty sand to pure
24 h. The clean sands were then sieved to obtain the appropriate gra-
silt are measured. Stemming from the test results, new expressions are
dations and then mixed with a non-plastic silica silt in the desired

234
M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

90 energy of compaction was adjusted so that the specimens, 10 cm in

f(e) = e-1.29 White sand + 5% FC height and 5 cm in diameter, were compacted to a pre-determined in-
White sand + 10%FC itial void ratio. Prior to the construction of the samples included in the
80
study, trial samples were prepared using the same mould to specify the
White sand + 20%FC
required number of layers and compaction effort to achieve a given
70 White sand + 30%FC void ratio and density. After the preparation of the sample, a vacuum of
Gmax (MPa)

about 10 kPa was applied to the specimen from the base. Vacuum was
then gradually removed during the application of the first isotropic
60
confining pressure of 50 kPa. After placing the drive mechanism and
axial displacement transducer (LVDT), the specimens were subjected to
50 sequential isotropic confining pressures of 50, 100, 200, 400 and
800 kPa, in a dry state. Volume changes of the specimens were calcu-
lated assuming isotropic compression and were taken as three times the
40 axial strain. The axial strain was measured from the recorded changes
of sample height through the displacement transducer with a precision
of ± 0.001 mm.
30
0.55 0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8
2.2. Apparatus and experimental procedure
e
Fig. 5. Variation of small-strain shear modulus with void ratio for White sand with dif- A modified Stokoe-type resonant column apparatus of fixed-free
ferent percentage of fines content at isotropic confining pressure of 100 kPa. ends [18] supplied by GDS Instruments, UK, was used in this study in
order to measure the small-strain shear modulus and damping ratio of
proportions. The prepared soils were then compacted in different layers laboratory created samples of silty sand. A schematic view as well as a
on the base pedestal of the apparatus in a plastic split mould. The close-up image of the apparatus is given in Fig. 4. In the resonant
column test, the specimen is vibrated in torsional mode of excitation at

Fig. 6. Variation of Gmax / f (e ) with p'/pa for all samples (Gmax values are in MPa).

235
M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

70 180
(a)
White Sand 160
60 20%
Crushed Blue sand 1 Error = 15%
140
50 Crushed Blue sand 2

Gmax (Predicted) , MPa

Silica Silt 120
A (MPa)

40
100

30 80

20 60

10 40

20
0 Data by Whichtmann et al. (2015)
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 100 0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
FC (%)
Gmax (Measured), MPa
0.7
180
0.65
20% (b)
160
Error = 15%
0.6 140
Gmax (Predicted) , MPa

120
n

0.55
White sand 100
0.5 Crushed Blue sand 1
80
Crushed Blue sand 2
0.45 Silica Silt 60

0.4
0 5 10 15 20 25 30
FC (%)
Fig. 7. Variation of parameters A and n with fines content for different soils (Note that
20% corresponds to the assumed threshold silt content).
different frequencies and the frequency response curve is derived for a
given input voltage and a given confining pressure [12,30]. The fre-
quency which renders the maximum shear strain amplitude is noted as
the resonant frequency. Using this frequency, the shear wave velocity
and consequently the small-strain shear modulus of the specimen are
obtained based on the application of the theory of elastic wave pro-
pagation in prismatic rods and considering the end conditions of the
sample [2,30]. The equivalent shear strain corresponded to 0.80 times
the maximum shear strain obtained from the recorded acceleration on
top of the sample during torsional loading, as specified in ASTM [2]. In
order to measure the small-strain material damping, the free-vibration
decay method was applied considering three cycles of free vibration
similar to the procedures described in Payan et al. [27] and Senetakis
et al. [36]. In order to calibrate the resonant column apparatus for
damping measurements, the damping ratio of a single aluminium rod
was measured using three cycles of vibrations. This approach was re-
peated with aluminium bars of different sizes with and without added
masses on top of the drive mechanism which led to the estimation of
apparatus damping in a wide range of frequencies. Damping ratios of
about 0.1–0.2% were recorded for all aluminium bars and resonant
frequencies, rendering an average value of about 0.15 which was con-
sidered as a baseline and subtracted from all damping measurements
40
100
20
Data by Goudarzy et al. (2016b)
0
0 20 40 60 80 100 120 140 160 180
Gmax (Measured), MPa
Fig. 8. Comparison between measured Gmax data by (a) Wichtmann et al. [41] and (b)
Goudarzy et al. [11] and predicted values using the proposed expression.
throughout this study. Note that for all the experiments, Gmax and Ds, min
were measured at equivalent shear strains less than 10−3%.
2.3. Experimental program
In total, thirty laboratory created specimens of sand-silt mixtures
were tested in the resonant column apparatus in a dry state for the
development of expressions for the small-strain shear modulus and
damping ratio of silty sands. Fifteen complete sets of tests were per-
formed on different mixtures of sands and the non-plastic silt with in-
itial void ratios of 0.7 at different confining pressures as summarized in
Table 2. In addition, three sets of tests were conducted on pure silica silt
with different initial void ratios as listed in Table 2. Finally, twelve
single tests were also conducted on silty sands with different initial void
ratios, equal to 0.6, 0.65 and 0.75 at 100 kPa confining pressure in
order to obtain the variation of small-strain shear modulus with void
ratio for different percentages of fines content. Note that the dynamic
test results on the three pure sand samples have been previously pre-
sented and discussed by Payan et al. [26,27].

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M. Payan et al.
Fig. 9. Typical results of small-strain damping calculations using free-vibration decay
(FVD) method for Crushed Blue sand 1 + 20%FC subjected to 200 kPa confining pres-
sure.
3. Small-strain shear modulus (Gmax )
3.1. Development of a Gmax expression for silty sand
Following the work of Payan et al. [26], the small-strain shear
modulus of sands (expressed in MPa) is taken as a function of isotropic
confining pressure (p′), void ratio (e), coefficient of uniformity (Cu) and
regularity (ρ) as shape descriptor:
n
A

  x
 (Cu 0.12)(−0.23ρ + 0.59)
p′
sand
Gmax (MPa) = (84Cu−0.14ρ0.68) × e −1.29 × ⎜⎛ ⎟⎞
⎝ pa ⎠
where pa is the reference atmospheric pressure and parameters A, x and
n are assumed to be dependent upon the percentage of fines content (FC
%), in addition to Cu and ρ. To establish such dependencies, and to
provide a general framework for the prediction of the small-strain shear
modulus of silty sands, a step-by-step approach is adopted to correlate
parameters A, x and n with the percentage of the silt portion. Notice
that throughout this work, the coefficient of uniformity and particle
shape refer to the characteristics of the sand portion of the mixtures,
whilst the inclusion of the non-plastic silt has been isolated through an
additional component that accounts for the percentage of silt.
Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240
3.2. Void ratio dependency
In order to examine the dependency of void ratio function para-
meter (x) to the amount of the silt portion (FC%), twelve tests on
samples with different percentages of fines content at variable initial
void ratios but same confining pressure of 100 kPa were performed.
Fig. 5 shows the results of these tests conducted on samples of White
Sand mixed with 5%, 10%, 20% and 30% of fines content. As can be
observed, the small-strain shear modulus of silty sand decreases as the
void ratio increases. At a given void ratio and confining pressure, Gmax
decreases as the percentage of fines content increases. Also included in
Fig. 5 are the functions of void ratio used for clean sands [26] fitted to
the experimental data at different fines content. As can clearly be ob-
served, a satisfactory match of the void ratio function proposed by
Payan et al. [26] to the experimental data on silty sands is obtained.
Therefore, the void ratio function in the form of Eq. (2) (developed
originally by [17,16]) has been used in this study to capture the effect
of void ratio:
f (e ) = e−1.29 (2)
Similar relationships have also been proposed and used for the
normalization of shear modulus of granular soils by Rahman et al. [28],
Goudarzy [9], Senetakis and Madhusudhan [35] and Goudarzy et al.
[10,11]. Note that the power of (− 1.29) is used for consistency with
the previous work by the authors [26], while Jamiolkowski et al.
[17,16] proposed a power of (− 1.30) for sands and clays.
3.3. Variation of A and n with fines content
Here, the results of the tests at different confining pressures on silty
sands with variable percentages of silt are utilised to quantify the in-
fluence of fines content on the model parameters (A and n) of the Gmax
expression in Eq. (1). The small-strain shear moduli, obtained from
resonant column tests, are first normalised by the void ratio function
(Eq. (2)), Gmax / f (e ) , to remove the effect of density, and then the var-
iations of normalised shear modulus are plotted against the normalised
isotropic confining pressure (p'/pa) (Fig. 6a, b and c). The results from
the tests conducted on pure silt at different initial void ratios are shown
in Fig. 6d.
As can be noticed from these figures, normalised small-strain shear
modulus values decrease as the percentage of silt increases at a given
confining pressure. Furthermore, as expected, the normalised Gmax for
all the specimens increases with increasing pressure following a power-
law trend [22,26,34,4]. Fitting a best-fit power function to the test data
using the least square error method, parameters A and n for each
sample are obtained. In Fig. 7a and b, the variations of the model
parameters A and n for all the samples are plotted against the percen-
tage of silt. For clean sands, there is a significant difference in small-
strain shear modulus of sands with various gradations and particle
shapes, as described in Payan et al. [26]. However, as the percentage of
fines content increases, the influence of different sand properties di-
minishes and the behaviour of the silty sand alters from a sand-domi-
nant to a silt-dominant response. At large fines content, it appears that
(1)
silt completely dominates the response, rendering Gmax independent of
the grain size characteristics and particle shape of the sand component.
Consequently, the small-strain shear moduli of all silty sands tend to-
wards a constant value, i.e. Gmax of pure silt, as the fines content in-
creases. Although there is no distinct fines content threshold triggering
the change in the behaviour from sand-dominant to silt-dominant re-
sponse, the experimental results suggest that the change in the beha-
viour gradually occurs over the fines content ranging from around
10–25%. To derive a simple expression for Gmax of silty sands, the as-
sumption of a distinct threshold value for the silt content accounting for
the change in behaviour is desirable. In this study, according to the
experimental results, the silt-dominant threshold of fines content is
taken as FC = 20%. Nevertheless, it is noted that there will always be a
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M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

Fig. 10. Variation of Ds, min with p'/pa for all samples.

transition zone over which the behaviour changes from sand dominant
to silt dominant. The imposition of a threshold fines content is therefore
merely an idealisation introduced for the sake of simplicity. Similar
idealisations have previously been adopted in the literature, with dif-
ferent researchers suggesting different threshold fines content varying
from as low as 10% [24,41] to as high as about 25–30% [11,24,43]. In
the expressions to follow, FC = 20% is used as the fines content
threshold, however, similar expressions can be developed using other
threshold values between 10% and 25%, with only minor changes in
the predictions.
3.4. Proposed expression for small-strain shear modulus of silty sand
In accordance with the above observations and assuming a linear
variation of A and n as the result of the Gmax – FC relationship before the
threshold fines content, a new expression for the small-strain shear
modulus of silty sand can be proposed based on the Gmax values of clean
sand and silt, as follows:
silt
modulus of the pure silt. The values of Gmax at different pressures and
void ratios for the non-plastic silica silt used in this study are given in
Fig. 6d.
It should be noted that Eq. (3) is general in nature and an appro-
silt
priate value for Gmax must be used based on the properties of the silt
portion of the mixture, even though the fine-grained material of the
study can be considered as a representative non-plastic soil of angular
grains. Also notice that in the above expressions (Eqs. (1) and (3)), the
coefficient of uniformity (Cu) and particle shape (ρ) of the clean sand
must be used to estimate the small-strain shear modulus of silty sands.
In contrast to the equation proposed by Wichtmann et al. [41],
which defined the ratio between shear moduli of clean sand and silty
sand with high percentage of fines content using a constant value, the
expressions proposed in this study (Eqs. (1) and (3)) correlate these
shear moduli explicitly based on the grain size distribution and particle
shape of the clean sand and fines content present in the mixture.
3.5. Verification of the proposed expression

siltysand
Gmax =
silt FC
⎧Gmax 20
sand
+ Gmax (
1−
FC
20 ) FC ≤ 20% In order to independently verify the applicability of the proposed
⎨ silt
Gmax FC > 20% expression for the prediction of small-strain shear modulus of silty
⎩ (3)
sands, comparisons are made between the model predictions and ex-
sand
where Gmax is given in Eq. (1) and corresponds to the small-strain shear perimental data from the literature. Wichtmann et al. [41] and Gou-
silt
modulus of the pure sand and Gmax corresponds to the small-strain shear darzy et al. [11] presented data from resonant column experiments

238
M. Payan et al. Soil Dynamics and Earthquake Engineering 102 (2017) 232–240

1.5 in which pa is again the reference atmospheric pressure and C and k are
20% model parameters. In order to incorporate the influence of fines content
in the above expression, several measurements have been conducted on
1.3 the sand-silt mixtures to obtain the damping ratio of silty sand at small
strains. Typical measurements of the small-strain damping ratio in this
study using the free-vibration decay (FVD) method is shown in Fig. 9
1.1 for Crushed Blue sand 1 + 20%FC subjected to 200 kPa confining
C (%)

pressure.
The results of all the damping tests are shown in Fig. 10. As ex-
White sand pected, within the scatter of data, the small-strain damping ratios of all
0.9
Crushed Blue sand 1 the samples decreased with confining pressure which trend aligns the
previous observations by Menq [22], Senetakis et al. [34], Senetakis
Crushed Blue sand 2
0.7 and Madhusudhan [35], and Payan et al. [27]. In addition, particularly
Silica Silt at lower pressures, Ds, min values are higher for samples with greater
percentages of fines content. The micro-mechanisms behind this trend
can be explained, partly, according to Bui [3]. In that study, it was
0.5
reported that in the soil samples with higher percentage of fines con-
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 100
tent, the number of contacts among the particles is larger. Therefore,
FC (%) the energy loss of a stress wave passing through this soil is higher at the
particle contacts compared to the soil with lower number of contacts.
-1 Consequently, the damping ratio of samples with greater percentage of
20% fines content is higher. This is particularly the case at low confinements.
-0.9 As the pressure increases, damping ratios converge to almost similar
values for all the specimens of a given sand type.
-0.8
4.2. Variation of C and k with fines content
-0.7
Greater values of small-strain damping ratio for silty sands com-
k

-0.6
pared to clean sands (particularly at low confinement) imply that as
White sand
-0.5 fines content increases, both C and k values in Eq. (4) increase. This
Crushed Blue sand 1 trend is demonstrated in Fig. 11. Also, it can be observed from this
-0.4 Crushed Blue sand 2 figure that almost the same values of C and k are obtained for large fines
content. Within the scatter of the data and following a similar argument
Silica Silt as in the development of Gmax expression in previous sections, it can be
-0.3
assumed that the soil dynamic behaviour is silt-dominant beyond 20%
-0.2 of fines content and the small-strain damping ratio converges to a fairly
0 5 10 15 20 25 30 100 constant value which is the Ds, min for pure silt. On the other hand, for
percentages of silt less than 20%, the damping ratio of the mixtures is
FC (%) significantly influenced by the damping ratio of the parent sand which
in turn is strongly affected by the grading characteristics and the shape
Fig. 11. Variation of parameters C and k with fines content for different soils (Note that
of sand grains.
20% corresponds to the assumed threshold silt content).

4.3. Proposed expression for small-strain damping ratio of silty sand

carried out on mixtures of a sub-angular sand and Hostun sand, re-
spectively, with variable percentages of fines content. Adopting ρ =
Following a similar approach used in the evaluation of small-strain
0.60 for both parent sands, which is a typical value for sub-angular
shear modulus of silty sand (assuming linear variation of the small-
sands [26], Fig. 8a and b present the small-strain shear moduli obtained
strain damping ratio with FC before the threshold fines content), a new
using the newly proposed expression against the experimental data.
expression for the prediction of the small-strain damping ratio of silty
Note that the small-strain shear modulus of silt in these experiments
sand is developed based on the Ds, min values of clean sand and silt, as
was assumed as the one for sand-silt mixture with highest percentage of
follows:
fines content tested. As can be seen, very good match is obtained be-
tween predicted and experimental data in both cases.
Dssiltysand
, min =
⎧ Dssilt FC sand
(
, min 20 + Ds, min 1 −
FC
20 ) FC ≤ 20%
⎨ Dssilt FC > 20%
⎩ , min (5)
4. Small-strain damping ratio in shear (Ds, min )
where Dssand
is given in Eq. (4) and
, min Dssilt
is the small-strain damping
, min
4.1. Development of a Ds, min expression for silty sand ratio of the pure silt. The typical values of Dssilt
, min for different pressures
for the non-plastic silica silt used in this study are given in Fig. 10d.
The following expression has been previously proposed by Payan
et al. [27] to correlate the small-strain damping ratio of clean sand to 5. Concluding remarks
isotropic confining pressure (p'), coefficient of uniformity (Cu), mean
grain size (d50 in mm) and regularity (ρ): Several resonant column tests on different silty sand samples with
k variable percentages of silica non-plastic fines content were performed

 C
 (0.72ρ − 0.86) in order to characterize the small-strain shear modulus and damping
p′
Ds, min (%) = (0.55Cu 0.1d50−0.3)(−2.06ρ + 2.43) × ⎜⎛ ⎟⎞ ratio of the soils along an isotropic stress path. The results of the tests
⎝ pa ⎠ (4) showed that as the fines content increases, the small-strain stiffness and

239
M. Payan et al.
damping ratio of different silty sands tend to converge and the beha-
viour of the soil transforms gradually from sand-dominant to silt-
dominant. For large percentage of fines content, the behaviour was
completely silt-dominant and the mixture of different types of sand with
silt showed similar values of small-strain stiffness as well as small-strain
damping ratio. The experimental results suggested that the change in
the behaviour from sand-dominant to silt-dominant happens gradually
over fines content ranging from around 10–25%, however, to derive a
simple expression for Gmax and Dmin of silty sands, a distinct threshold
value of 20% was assumed for the change in behaviour. The experi-
mental results were then utilised to develop new expressions for the
prediction of small-strain shear modulus and damping ratio of silty
sands with variable percentages of fines content. A practical implication
of the results of this study is that for sands with a small percentage of
silt, characterization of the soil in terms of particle shape and grading is
necessary in order to correctly estimate the small-strain shear modulus,
but for silty sands with a considerable fines content (i.e. fines content of
more than around 20%), the characteristics of the sand-portion are not
important and the small-strain dynamic properties of the soil is domi-
nated by the properties of the silt.
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