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To study the behavior of carbonate sands parametrically, some monotonic triaxial testswere carried out on Kish carbonate sand. The sample was provided from Kish Island beach. Inorder to examine the effect of density and confining pressure, samples in loose and dense stateswere tested under different confining pressures. For studying the effect of drainage andconsolidation, different stress paths were followed. Also to study the effect of particle crushing indrained tests all samples were graded before and after testing. Comparison between loose anddense samples in both drained and undrained tests showed that with increasing confiningpressure, the reduction in shear resistance in loose samples is less than dense samples and theincrement rate of particle crushing in loose samples is more than dense samples. In the range oflow confining pressures both loose and dense samples showed dilation response. With increasingconfining pressure, the loose samples tended to exhibit contraction and the rate of dilation indense samples reduced. Because recovering undisturbed sample of carbonate sediments is veryhard or even impossible so the effect of soil disturbance is not studied in this research.

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The unique behaviour of carbonate materials under shear loading has stimulated in investigating of their geological and engineering properties.Carbonate soils composed of calcium or other carbonates and most abundant in tropical marine environments are of interest from geotechnical view, especially for offshore engineers engaged with Fossil-based fuel exploitation. This was initiated in the early 1960's, when the first offshore borings in the Persian Gulf identified layers of calcarenite and thick layers of sand containing visible shell fragments.For the purpose of exploiting gas and oil resources in hot and temperate climates (e.g. Persian Gulf) off-shore structures have been placed on carbonate soils. The carbonate sediments are high crushable compared with low crushable sediments such as quartzic soils.To examine the crushability of these problematic sediments a series of monotonic compression, extension and post-cyclic triaxial tests under different densities and confining pressures was carried out to study the crushing behaviour of "Rock" carbonate sand obtained from Cornwall, England.It was shown that crushing coefficient decreases with increasing in maximum principal effective stress ratio for both loose and dense states. It seems that for skeletal carbonate sand maximum and minimum dry densities will be changed during shearing loading. In other words, even though the sample has experienced an increase in density, it may also have experienced a reduction in relative density.

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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 this study, a researching program is conducted by cyclic triaxial test to determine the post-cyclic behavior of Bushehr carbonate sand retrieved from the north of the Persian Gulf, under anisotropic consolidation at 200 kPa confining pressure. The article compares the post-cyclic monotonic strength and excess pore water pressures generated after the test with the pre-cyclic monotonic results. The results attest to the existence of a relationship between CSR (Cyclic Stress Ratio) and the frequency of failure cycles. The article also investigates the relationship between the amount of excess pore pressures generated during both the cyclic and post-cyclic loading, revealing an increase in the post-cyclic strength and stiffness of sand retrieved from Bushehr. Also the effect of multi stages cyclic loading, density, pore pressure and stain history in post cyclic strength and stiffness is evaluated. The increasing in post cyclic strength and stiffness depends on excess pore pressure generated during cyclic loading and stain history. This article also reveals that a distinct trend in the relation between post cyclic behavior and crushing value does not exist at lower confining pressure.