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Quantitative Analysis of Microstructure Properties and their Influence on Macroscale Response

  • Geotechnical Engineering
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Abstract

The shear behavior of soils is typically related to the state of the soil in terms of the initial global void ratio and effective confining stress. However, laboratory tests on reconstituted sand specimens have shown that the shear behavior is also dependent upon the specimen preparation method. This paper describes the findings of a series of studies, which quantitatively evaluated the differences in the inherent microstructure of dilatant sand specimens prepared by air pluviation, moist tamping and water deposition. Quantitative measures such as local void ratio distribution, local void ratio distribution entropy and particle orientation entropy were found to be dependent on the preparation method. Microstructure evolution in the sand specimens during triaxial compression testing was also investigated. Measuring global properties of the specimens was shown to mask the complex and evolving internal conditions during shear. The global response was found to be strongly dependent on the shear induced microstructure which in turn was directly influenced by the preparation method dependent inherent microstructure.

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Acknowledgements

The research described in this paper was supported in part by the U.S. National Science Foundation contract CMS-9457549. Additional support was provided for researchers in the NSF funded ERC on Bio-mediated and Bio-inspired Geotechnics (CBBG). The support of NSF through PTE Federal Award No. EEC-1449501 is acknowledged. Discussions on the merits of entropy that the senior author had with P.L. Bourdeau were most valuable.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, GA, 30332, USA

    J. David Frost & Nimisha Roy

  2. AECOM, Los Angeles, CA, 90071, USA

    Chien-Chang Chen

  3. North Carolina Department of Transportation, Raleigh, NC, 27529, USA

    Jin-Young Park

  4. California Department of Transportation, Office of Geotechnical Design South, Sacramento, CA, 95814, USA

    Deh-Jeng Jang

  5. Department of Civil Engineering, Shanghai University, Shanghai, 200444, China

    Ye Lu

  6. Golder Associates, Redmond, WA, 98052, USA

    Jie Cao

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  1. J. David Frost
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  2. Nimisha Roy
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  3. Chien-Chang Chen
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  5. Deh-Jeng Jang
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Correspondence to Nimisha Roy.

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Frost, J.D., Roy, N., Chen, CC. et al. Quantitative Analysis of Microstructure Properties and their Influence on Macroscale Response. KSCE J Civ Eng 23, 3777–3792 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-019-0713-y

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12205-019-0713-y

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