Change of soil mechanical properties due to triaxial sample size

Abstract

Triaxial test is widely used to determine the behaviour and strength parameters of soil. Several consolidated drained triaxial compression tests were performed on two specimen sizes of sand and clay. This article investigate and compares the influence of specimen size and scale effect on the soil shear strength. The tests results show that the shear strength parameters are influenced by the clay specimen size. The results indicate that the effect of triaxial clay sample size is more significant with higher confining pressures. The second type of tests carried out on sand samples shows that sample size doesn‘t influence the results of the shear strength. Author’s show that clay analyses can be significantly affected by the choice of the specimen size used to determine shear strength parameters.