Experimental Study on the Minimum Required Specimen Width to Maximum Particle Size Ratio in Direct Shear Tests
Research Institute on Mining and Environment, Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada
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Academic Editors: João Castro-Gomes, Cristina Fael and Miguel Nepomuceno
CivilEng 2022, 3(1), 66-84; https://doi.org/10.3390/civileng3010005
Received: 15 November 2021
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Revised: 17 January 2022
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Accepted: 19 January 2022
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Published: 21 January 2022
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Early Career Stars in Civil Engineering)
Conducting laboratory direct shear tests on granular materials is a common practice in geotechnical engineering. This is usually done by following the ASTM D3080/D3080M-11 (hereafter named ASTM), which stipulates a minimum required value of 10 for specimen width (W) to the maximum particle size (dmax) ratio. Recently, a literature review performed by the authors showed that the minimum required W/dmax ratio given in the ASTM is not large enough to eliminate the specimen size effect (SSE). The minimum required W/dmax ratio of ASTM needs to be revised. In this study, a critical analysis is first made on existing data in order to identify the minimum required W/dmax ratio. The analysis shows that more experimental data obtained on specimens having W/dmax ratios between 10 and 50 are particularly necessary. To complete this need, a series of direct shear tests were performed on specimens having different dmax by using three shear boxes of different dimensions. The results show once again that the minimum required W/dmax ratio of 10, defined in the ASTM, is not large enough to eliminate the SSE. Further analysis on these and existing experimental results indicates that the minimum required W/dmax ratio to remove the SSE of friction angles is about 60. These results along with the limitations of this study are discussed.
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Keywords:
shear strength; direct shear tests; friction angle; specimen size effect; minimum required specimen sizes; ASTM D3080/D3080M-11
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MDPI and ACS Style
Deiminiat, A.; Li, L.; Zeng, F. Experimental Study on the Minimum Required Specimen Width to Maximum Particle Size Ratio in Direct Shear Tests. CivilEng 2022, 3, 66-84. https://doi.org/10.3390/civileng3010005
AMA Style
Deiminiat A, Li L, Zeng F. Experimental Study on the Minimum Required Specimen Width to Maximum Particle Size Ratio in Direct Shear Tests. CivilEng. 2022; 3(1):66-84. https://doi.org/10.3390/civileng3010005
Chicago/Turabian StyleDeiminiat, Akram, Li Li, and Feitao Zeng. 2022. "Experimental Study on the Minimum Required Specimen Width to Maximum Particle Size Ratio in Direct Shear Tests" CivilEng 3, no. 1: 66-84. https://doi.org/10.3390/civileng3010005
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