Characterisation of Ballina clay

This paper describes a comprehensive characterisation study carried out on clay from the National Soft Soil Testing Facility located at Ballina in northern New South Wales (NSW, Australia). Ballina clay represents the estuarine soft clays of high to extremely high plasticity from the Richmond river valley in NSW. They are structured and lightly overconsolidated with an average organic content around 3%. Index properties as well as mechanical parameters were estimated from laboratory tests performed on tube specimens retrieved using a fixed-piston sampler. Index characterisation tests were combined with constant rate of strain tests, incremental loading tests and stress-path triaxial testing to evaluate compressibility, stiffness, permeability and strength parameters. These deposits display very high compressibility and a low undrained shear strength which is larger in triaxial compression. Ballina clay shows a non-linear stress–strain response either in one-dimensional compression or undrained shearing. T...

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