Zarka shakedown modelling of expansive soils subjected to wetting and drying cycles

ABSTRACT

Unsaturated expansive soils subjected to wetting and drying cycles result in huge differential settlements of structures built on these materials. The existed models for these materials present large number of parameters that lead to time-consuming procedure to characterise their mechanical behaviour during wetting–drying cycles. In this context, Zarka shakedown theory previously applied to the mechanical loading of granular materials has been used for expansive soils subjected to suction cycles. The parameters of this shakedown-based model were calibrated for two different expansive soils. The comparisons between the experimental results and the calculations for the different tests, demonstrate the capacity of Zarka shakedown theory to simulate the mechanical behaviour of unsaturated expansive soils.

KEYWORDS:

• Expansive soils
• mechanical behaviour
• constitutive modelling
• Zarka shakedown theory

Acknowledgements

This work is financially supported by the project of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province (Grant No: ZR2016AB18) and the program of China Scholarship Council (CSC No.: 2011008046).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work is financially supported by the project of Natural Science Foundation of Shandong Province [Grant No: ZR2016AB18] and the program of China Scholarship Council [CSC No.: 2011008046].