Resilient strain and stiffness degradation of Yellow River silt under long-term cyclic loads

Abstract

The use of natural River silt treated as "waste materials" has become the focused research in the Yellow River flooded area, especially in the highway engineering recently. It is of great significance to study the deformation and stiffness degradation of the Yellow River silt under long-term cyclic loads. In this paper, a series of undrained cyclic triaxial tests with a large number of cycles (10000 times) for Yellow River silt have been carried out by using triaxial apparatus, the effects of confining pressure and cyclic stress ratio on the resilient strain of the Yellow River silt were explored. The critical cyclic stress and critical cyclic stress ratio between the plastic shakedown state and incremental collapse state of the Yellow River silt were determined, and the modulus softening behaviour of the Yellow River silt are discussed. This study not only provided theoretical support for the long-term engineering performance of the Yellow River silt, but also provided theoretical guidance for the cyclic response of all similar types of subgrade soils.