Abstract
When a saturated clay is sampled in an undisturbed manner, an effective confining stress due to the negative pore pressure induced by stress release restricts the volume expansion. The vertical and horizontal stresses to which the clay was subjected in the ground are smaller and larger than this isotropically confining stress equivalent to the mean principal stress in the ground, respectively. Thus the clay sample expands vertically and shrinks horizontally under undrained conditions.
The consolidation test developed herein empleys a specimen with a smaller diameter than the inner diameter of the ring that expands to the inner diameter of the ring under undrained conditions when the in-situ overburden pressure is applied. In this paper, using three kinds of clay samples with different plasticities consolidated from slurry, applicability of this proposed test procedure was verified; results from the conventional consolidation test procedure are also discussed.
