Abstract
Limited experimental data is available to verify the variation of suction stress that is typically experienced by partially saturated soils under large deformations. The purpose of this study is to present soil suction characteristic curve (SSCC) for compacted high plasticity clay in light of the recent experimental data obtained from temperature controlled/constant water content ring shear testing over a matric suction range varying between 0-200 kPa. Failure envelopes are used to indirectly calculate the experimental values of suction stress corresponding to each level of matric suction. The experimental suction stress was found to increase non-linearly with increasing matric suction at constant temperature. Also, suction stress increased with increasing temperature when compared at constant matric suction. Furthermore, the soil water characteristic curve (SWCC) parameters were obtained on test soil and used to estimate the SSCC using the predictive model proposed by Lu et al. (2010). However, the suction stress values were mostly overpredicted using this model. On the other hand, a simple polynomial (two-parameter function) model was found to best predict the suction stress over the matric suction range of 0-200 kPa for clay of high plasticity.
