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The deformation and stiffness characteristics of a cemented gravely sand was investigated using triaxial equipment. The triaxial tests were conducted in both dry and saturated undrained conditions. Artificially cemented samples are prepared using gypsum plaster as the cementing agent. The plaster was mixed with the base soil at the weight percentages of 1.5, 3, 4.5 and 6. The applied confining pressure varied between 25 to 500 kPa in triaxial tests. The process of yielding of the soil was investigated for the considered soil and the bond and final yield points were identified for the cemented soil with different cement contents. The variations of deformation and stiffness parameters with cement content and confining stress were studied as well. Some of the parameters were determined for both drained and undrained conditions to investigate the effect of drainage condition on the stiffness and yield characteristics of the tested cemented gravely sand. According to the results, the difference between drained and undrained tangent stiffness decreases with increase in confining stress. Finally the effect of cement type was investigated as an important parameter affecting the stiffness at bond yield. The rate of increase in tangent stiffness at bond yield changes with cement content for different cementing agents.

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There are limitations in experimental studies on sand-gravel mixtures due to the small size of testing

specimens. Due to this problem, many researchers have worked on prediction of the shear strength of mixture by testing

the sandy fraction of soil alone and developed empirical relationships. Most of the previous relationships have been

determined for low surcharge pressures in which particle breakage does not affect the shear strength parameters.

However, the particle breakage affects the relationships in higher confinements. At the present study, the results of

large scale direct shear tests on sand and sand-gravel mixtures was used to investigate the shear behavior and

dilatancy characteristics in a wider range of surcharge pressures. The gravel content, relative density, surcharge

pressure and gravel grain size were considered as variables in testing program. The relationships between shear

strength characteristics of sand and sand-gravel mixtures were determined considering dilation characteristics of the

soil. In this regard, the minimum void ratio was found as a useful indirect index that relates uniquely to the critical

state friction angle independent of soil gradation. The relations between critical state or peak friction angles of the

mixture with minimum void ratio were determined as a function of surcharge pressure. The correlations could be useful

for determination of the strength parameters of sand-gravel composites by testing sandy fraction of mixture.

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In saturated soils, heating induces thermal expansion of both grains and the pore fluid. Lower thermal expansion coefficient of aggregates results in the increase of pore pressure and reduction of the effective stress besides subsequent volume changes due to the dissipation of pore pressure and heat transfer. Dissipation of thermally induced pore pressure with time is a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) phenomenon, involving gradients of pore pressure and temperature, hydraulic and thermal flows within the mass of soil and changes in the mechanical properties with temperature. The objective of this paper is presentation of a numerical method to determine the effect of temperature on consolidation of clays. In this regard, the finite element code, PISA is used for one dimensional THM analysis of porous media. The analysis performed using both linear elastic and elastoplastic Cam clay models. Modified Cam clay model was applied in elastoplastic analysis. Variation of temperature, displacements and pore pressure determined with time and compared with numerical solutions of other researchers. Also it was indicated that implementation of coupled THM analysis yields better results for displacements compared to the hydro mechanical (HM) one. Application of elastoplastic constitutive model instead of linear elastic one indicated that preconsolidation pressure has an important effect on results of analysis.

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Because of the complexity of the physical processes in the vicinity of the hydraulic structures due to the separation of the flow, traditional methods for for prediction of maximum scour depth downstream of hydraulic structures are mostly based on empirical approaches. Hence, only a few theoretical works have been reported to study this phenomenon. The present paper describes a new approach based on the momentum principles to estimate the maximum local scour depth downstream of a submerged sluice gate flowing over horizontal or adverse stilling basin. A control volume of the fluid in the equilibrium state of the scour hole was considered and based on momentum principles, some equations are derived to estimate the scour depth at equilibrium state. To verify the proposed equations, large numbers of experiments were planned and conducted under wide range of characteristic parameters such as, incoming Froude number, sediment size, tailwater depth, length and slope of the apron. It was found that the proposed equations fall in a good agreement with experimental results. It was also observed that, in the case of horizontal apron, a specific tailwater depth exists with which the local scour depth attains a minimum value. However, in the case of adverse basins when the tailwater depth takes a specific value, the maximum depth of the scour hole reaches to its maximum and then decreases to a constant value as the tailwater depth increases. This critical tailwater depth was formulated using a semi-theoretical equation.

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This paper presents a model for prediction of the mechanical behavior of sand-gravel mixtures using generalized plasticity and critical state concepts. Proposed model is based on the difference between critical state lines of sand and sand-gravel mixture in e-Lnp' plane. A generalized plasticity model is considered as the base model for sandy soil. Its state parameter, dilation rate and hardening function are modified to involve the effects of gravel particles on the behavior of mixture. Gravel content is considered as a physical parameter for determination of four new added parameters of the model. Verification of the proposed model performed considering four sets of experiments conducted by different researchers on poorly graded sand-gravel mixtures. According to the results, proposed model provides satisfactory qualitative and quantitative predictions of the behavior of sand-gravel mixture. Stress- strain behavior besides volumetric strains in drained condition and induced pore pressure during undrained loading are satisfactory predicted which indicates the possibility of its application in boundary value problems of geotechnical engineering.