Dynamic behavior of reinforced clayey sand under cyclic loading

Abstract Experimental investigations and modeling of linear elasticity of fiber-reinforced clayey sand under cyclic loading unloading are conducted in this paper. Experimental studies are focused on four aspects. First, a series of cyclic triaxial tests, with different confining pressures and deviator stress ratios up to 150 cycles, are performed. Impacts of fiber content, cell pressure, deviator stress ratio and loading unloading repetition that affect dynamic behavior of the composite material are discussed. It is shown that shear modulus decreases with increasing deviator stress ratio at high confining pressure and the rate of loss of shear modulus found to be much lower for fiber reinforced specimens. Other results show that increase of shear modulus with loading repetition is more pronounced at higher deviator stress ratios. Second, the optimum fiber content is experimented under cyclic loading unloading and is expressed as a power function of deviatoric stress ratio. It is shown that optimum fiber content is not constant and it is affected by deviator stress ratio. Third, a function is introduced to describe the linear stress–strain curve under cyclic loading unloading using equivalent linear analysis. The shear modulus G is expressed as a function of fiber content, confining pressure, deviatoric stress ratio and loading repetition. Finally constitutive coefficients of the model parameters are calibrated by the results of cyclic triaxial shear tests and using the linear regression.