Influence of sand content on mechanical properties of sand-silt mixtures from check dam deposits in the Loess Hilly of Ningxia, China

An accurate description of the stress-strain relationships of sand-fine mixtures is very important to analyze the soil’s mechanical properties. Hence, a series of consolidated drained (CD) triaxial tests were performed on reconstructed sand-silt mixtures with sand contents of 0%, 16.67%, 28.57%, 50%, and 60% in the paper to examine the effect of the sand content on the stress-strain curves of the soil. Results show that for sand-fine mixtures with different sand contents, the stress-strain curves are also mainly strain softening though there exist different degrees of softening. In order to quantitatively describe the strain-softening characteristics of sand-fine mixtures, a modified Duncan-Chang model was developed. To verify the applicability of the modified mode, examples such as coral clay and undisturbed loess are described and predicted. There is a high consistency between theoretical and experimental values. Finally, a sand-content-dependent constitutive model that considered the effects of sand content and confining pressure was proposed based on the modified Duncan-Chang model by constructing the relationship between model parameters and confining pressure and sand content. The constitutive model was implemented in ABAQUS software and verified by comparing the calculated results with the triaxial test data of sand-fine mixtures under the confining pressure of 500 kPa. The comparison results indicate that the constitutive model can reflect the real characteristics of sand-fine mixtures.