Ffect of fines on the stress-strain behavior of chlef sand

Abstract EN

Silty sand soils are largely found in nature in varying proportions with sand and silt.

The characteristics of clean sands concerning the shear strength have been studied extensively; however in the field sands are mixed with appreciable amount of silt or clay.

Individual shear strength behaviour of silt as macro constituent has always remained embedded under the availability' of two different soils, i.e.

sandy and clayey soils.

A major understanding in the last decade with respect to the behaviour of silty soils has led to important research : activities in this field.

One of the most specific features of silty soils is their low saturation strength, which has resulted in settlement of many structures constructed on them after years of construction.

This paper presents; the characterization of the engineering behaviour of sand containing different amounts of silt.

A laboratory investigation has been conducted to study the effect" of varying low plastic silt (IP = 5) on the shear strength characteristics of Chief sand (Algeria).

For this purpose, a series of drained and undrained monotonic triaxial compression tests were performed on reconstituted saturated silty sand samples with several different silt contents ranging from 0 to 50% within three separate density ranges ( Dr = 12, 50, 90%).

The results show that the stress-strain response and shear strength behaviour is controlled by the percentage of fines and the sample becomes contractive for all densities studied.