Thermo-Mechanical Behaviour of Two Reconstituted Clays

Abstract

The effect of temperature on soil behaviour has been the subject of many studies in recent years due to an increasing number of projects related to the application of high temperature to soil. One example is the construction of facilities for the disposal of hot high level nuclear waste canisters (150-200C) several hundred meters underground in the clay formations. Despite this, the effects and mechanism by which temperature affects the soil properties and behaviour are not fully known. A limited amount of reliable experimental data, technological difficulties and experimental methods employed by different researchers could have contributed to the uncertainties surrounding the soil behaviour at elevated temperature. Also several thermo-mechanical models have been developed for soil behaviour, but their validity needs to be examined by reliable experimental data. In this research, efforts have been made to improve the experimental techniques. Direct displacement measuring devices have been successfully used for the first time to measure axial and lateral displacements of clay samples during tests at various temperatures. The thermo mechanical behaviour of two reconstituted clays has been investigated by performing triaxial and permeability tests at elevated temperature. Undrained and drained triaxial tests were carried out on normally consolidated and over consolidated samples of M44 clay and Kaolin C1C under different effective stresses, and at temperatures between 22C and 100C. Permeability tests were carried out on samples of M44 clay at temperatures between 22C and 50C. The effects of temperature on permeability, volume change, pore pressure development, shear strength and stiffness, stress strain response and critical state parameters for different consolidation histories have been investigated by comparing the results at various temperatures. The results are also compared with the predictions of two models. It has been found that at elevated temperature the shear strength, friction angle and initial small strain stiffness reduce whereas permeability increases. The slope of the swelling line in the v-p� plane has been found to reduce with temperature. The slope of the isotropic normal consolidation line (INCL) and critical state line (CSL) in the v-p� plane have been observed to be independent of temperature, but both the INCL and the CSL shift downwards to lower locations as temperature increases. The deformations during drained cooling and re heating cycles have been found to be elastic and to simply reflect the expansivity of the soils solid particles. The thermal volume changes during undrained heating have been observed to be direct results of the thermal expansion of water and clay particles. The internal displacement measuring devices have been found to produce reliable data for the variation of strains at elevated temperature.