Macro-meso effects of gradation and particle morphology on the compressibility characteristics of calcareous sand

Abstract

In order to fully develop the South China Sea, a large number of reclamation projects using calcareous sand have been carried out in this area recently. A deep understanding of the physical and mechanical properties of calcareous sand is of critical importance. Therefore, the calcareous sand near a certain reef of the South China Sea is used in this study to investigate the effect of three-dimensional (3-D) particle morphology and gradation on the compressibility characteristics of calcareous sand. This paper proposes a 3-D mesoscope observation method to obtain the average 3-D angularity parameter Sd and 3-D aspect ratio Td of calcareous sand with different particle sizes. It is found that the morphology of coarse particles (diameter: 5 ~ 1 mm) is significantly multi-angular, while the morphologies of middle particles (1 ~ 0.25 mm) are mostly dendritic and schistic. Compared to the 3-D Sd of quartz sand, the calcareous sand’s particle morphology is much more irregular and multi-angular, which makes it easy for the calcareous sand to form large pores and, thus, be more compressible. In order to systematically study the effect of gradation on the calcareous sand’s compressibility characteristics, a number of compression tests on calcareous sand with different gradations are taken. The influential mechanism is then discussed by analyzing the test results from a mesoscopic viewpoint. It is found that changing the coarse fraction content is the most efficient way to reduce the compressibility of the calcareous sand. That is because of the coarse fraction’s high angularity, which makes the skeleton-bearing capacity of the calcareous sand sensitive to the change of coarse fraction content. An empirical formula is proposed to evaluate the compressibility of the calcareous sand with different coarse fraction contents.