Summary
In order to determine shear strength of fine-grained unsaturated soils, a new design of a shear box for a modified direct shear device is described where a desired matric suctions is added easily with a hanging column. Simple principles were employed to develop the direct shear testing device so that it would be robust, easy to use, and readily assembled and disassembled for testing and maintenance. Tests were conducted with sandy silts under several net normal stresses (σn ua) for different desired matric suction (ua–uw). The results show that unsaturated shear strength and friction angle (πb) is consistent with results from prediction procedure (Fredlund and Barbour 1996) and estimated friction angle (πb) based on a soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) of the sandy silt, respectively.
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Sun, S., Xu, H. (2007). Determining the Shear Strength of Unsaturated Silt. In: Schanz, T. (eds) Experimental Unsaturated Soil Mechanics. Springer Proceedings in Physics, vol 112. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-69873-6_19
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/3-540-69873-6_19
Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg
Print ISBN: 978-3-540-69872-2
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