Deformation Properties of Red River Sand in Cyclic Triaxial Tests

Small strain deformation properties of dry, medium dense and dense Red river sand such as Young’s modulus, Ez and damping ratios, h, were experimentally investigated by using cylindrical specimens (Di = 5 cm, Hi = 10 cm) during isotropic consolidation with confining stress, \(\sigma_{c}^{\prime }\) , from 30 to 400 kPa and came back. At some stable stress states, Ez was measured with the non-contact transducer, by applying a series of unload-reload cycles with vertical strain single amplitude, \(\varepsilon_{a} \le 0.001\%\) . In addition, the dependency of Ez and h with \(\varepsilon_{a}\) was investigated by applying a series of cyclic loading with changing the \(\varepsilon_{a}\) amplitude from 0.001 to 0.04%, at constant \(\sigma_{c}^{\prime } = 100\;{\text{kPa}}\) . Test results show that the Ez could be simulated as a power function of \(\sigma_{c}^{\prime m}\) with an average power value m = 0.52 during isotropic consolidation. In addition, the degradation of the vertical Young’s modulus and the increase of damping ratio on the single vertical strain amplitude at given confining stress were observed. The experimental results were consistent with the published data.