Abstract:

In order to investigate the deformation behavior of the saturated soft clay in the Pearl River Delta under traffic loading, a series of undrained uniaxial cyclic loading creep tests were performed under K0 consolidation. The results show that  according to the intensity of cyclic loading, the accumulative deformation of the saturated soft clay can be divided into two types, one is decrescent and the other is destructive;  the relationship between the accumulative strain rate of decrescent cyclic creep and the cyclic number can be described with a power function;  the introduced relative deviatoric stress level can be well described by considering the effects of cyclic devia- toric stress, initial static deviatoric stress and confining pressure; and  the accumulative strain rate is an expo- nential function of the relative deviatoric stress level. A strain rate equation of saturated soft clay in the Pearl River Delta is also presented in the paper based on the flow theory, which well describes the strain rate-stress-cyclic number relationship of decrescent cyclic creep.

Key words: long-term cyclic loading, saturated soft clay, cyclic creep, strain rate, relative deviatoric stress