SEDL / STP / STP361-EB / STP30011S

The Strength of “Undisturbed” Clay Determined from Undrained Tests

Ladd, CC
Assistant professor and professor and head of soil mechanics division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Lambe, TW
Assistant professor and professor and head of soil mechanics division, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass.

Pages: 30    Published: Jan 1964

Download this paper for $25 PDF (532K)          View License Agreement
Abstract

Test data from unconsolidated-undrained (UU) and consolidated-undrained (CU) tests on tube samples of several saturated clays are compared, and the generally large discrepancies in undrained shear strength, S^u, are analyzed in terms of changes in effective stress during the sampling process. Data are presented to show that the residual effective stress of laboratory specimens of normally consolidated clay is typically less than one third of the value corresponding to perfect sampling, where only the in situ shear stresses are released.