Characteristics of deformation and damping of cement treated and expanded polystyrene mixed lightweight subgrade fill under cyclic load

Abstract

To investigate the deformation and damping characteristics of cement treated and expanded polystyrene (EPS) beads mixed lightweight soils, this study conducted a series of triaxial shear tests cyclic loading for different confining pressures, cement contents, and soil categories. Through repeated loading and unloading cycles, axial accumulative strain, resilient modulus, and damping ratio versus axial total strain were analyzed and the mechanical behavior was revealed and interpreted. Results show that the resilient modulus increases with increasing confining pressure and cement content. A decreasing power function can be used to fit the relationship between the resilient modulus and the axial total strain. Although sandy lightweight specimens usually own higher resilient modulus than silty clay lightweight specimens do, the opposite was also found when the axial total strain is larger than 8% with 50 kPa confining pressure and 14% cement content. For damping ratio the EPS beads mixed lightweight soil yields a weak growth trend with increasing axial total strain and a small reduction with higher confining pressure and cement content. For more cementations, the damping ratio of the sandy lightweight soil is always smaller than the silty clay lightweight soil. Nonetheless, the differences of damping ratios that were obtained under all of the test conditions are not significant.