Experimental and Theoretical Investigations of the Constitutive Relations of Artificial Frozen Silty Clay

The strength and deformation characteristics of artificial frozen soils are quite sensitive to temperature, confining pressure, and water content. To investigate these effects, a series of triaxial compressive tests on frozen Harbin silty clay were conducted at temperatures of −5 °C, −10 °C, and −15 °C under different confining pressures and water contents. From the stress–strain curves under lower water content and confining pressure, strain–softening behavior was observed. The modified Duncan–Chang (MDC) model was employed to describe the constitutive relations of artificial frozen silty clay while considering the strain–softening effects. After introducing statistical damage (SD) theory, an SD constitutive model with the failure strain as a random variable was proposed, which is able to overcome the drawbacks of the MDC model. The predicted SD model results are found to be consistent with the experimental results.