Permanent deformation characteristics of saturated sand under cyclic loading

The loading path involving principal stress rotation (PSR) during shear is an important phenomenon encountered in many field conditions. Typically for traffic loading, both the magnitude and direction of principal stresses may vary with time due to the motion of vehicles, and the stress path can be mimicked by a heart shape in the deviatoric stress space. Conventional triaxial tests are not suitable to recreate this type of stress path in that no torsional shear stress can be applied on the test samples. To overcome this limitation, a series of tests using a hollow cylinder apparatus were conducted on sand to investigate the permanent deformation characteristics under drained conditions with different levels of confining pressure (sigma(c)), cyclic vertical stress ratio (CVSR), and cyclic torsional stress ratio (eta). The results clearly show an increase in the permanent deformation with eta, indicating that the PSR effect on permanent deformation cannot be ignored. Both sigma(c) and CVSR were found to also affect permanent deformation, which was more pronounced when PSR was coupled into the test. A five-parameter formulation that accounted for the effect of confining pressure, deviatoric stress, torsional shear stress, and number of loading cycles was subsequently established to analyze the permanent strain. The formulation coefficients were first determined and then used to explain the effects of stress variables on the permanent deformation. Validation studies were performed to address the adequacy of the formulation to predict permanent deformation.