Behaviour of Clean AI Sand Under Triaxial Monotonic Loading

Adelaide Industrial (AI) sand has been widely used for land development and as a construction material in Adelaide, Australia. However, the mechanical properties of AI sand are not yet well understood. In this paper, the overall behaviour of AI sand is discussed initially, and then its characteristic features under drained and undrained triaxial shearing are evaluated for a wide range of initial void ratio, e₀ (1.09 to 0.73) and mean effective confining stress, p’₀ (50 to 400 kPa). It was observed that the undrained and drained behaviour of AI sand was significantly influenced by the initial state, i.e., e₀ and p’₀. Under undrained shearing, AI sand displayed normal soil behaviour, i.e., a higher contractive tendency with increasing p’₀ for the same e₀.The triggering of static liquefaction was identified by instability stress ratio, η_IS = q/p’ and it was observed that η_IS was influenced by both e₀ and p’₀. In drained shearing, the samples with low e₀ showed higher stiffness as compared to samples with high e₀ for a range of p’₀ between 100 kPa and 400 kPa.