Cementation effects on rigid-soft particle mixtures

Cemented mixtures composed of rigid sand particles and soft rubber particles are tested to investigate their small strain behavior. Mixtures are prepared with different volumetric sand fractions (sf) to identify cementation and decementation responses using shear wave propagation at the small strain, and k_o-loading. The shear wave velocity increases with increase in the vertical effective stress for uncemented soils. The higher the sand fraction, the higher the shear wave velocity. As the sand fraction increases, the response of the specimens shows transition from rubber-like to sand-like behavior. During cementation hardening, the shear wave velocity dramatically increases even at the fixed stress. While the cementation hinders the apparent behavior during loading stage, transition behavior appears during reloading stage due to the breakage of the cementation hardening. Copyright ASCE 2007.