Soil structures are often comprised or supported by soils that are mixtures of cohesive and granular geomaterials. These soils are termed as intermediate or mixed soils and are widely found in natural deposits and man-made soil structures. The objective of this paper is to study the behavior of mixed clayey soils under monotonic, cyclic, and post-cyclic monotonic loading, with the main focus on the last of these three. For this purpose, a number of strain-controlled monotonic, cyclic, and post-cyclic triaxial compression tests were carried out on “clay–sand” and “clay–gravel” mixtures in undrained conditions. The effects of sand (or gravel) contents, number of cycles, cyclic strain amplitude, consolidation pressure, and grain size on the mechanical behavior of the mixtures are evaluated. The major findings from the laboratory study are: (i) the addition of granular materials to the clayey soils increases excess pore-water pressure during strain-controlled monotonic undrained shearing and cyclic loading and (ii) during post-cyclic monotonic shearing, mixed clayey soils behave similarly to overconsolidated soils; the higher the granular material is, the higher the overconsolidation ratio would be. Based on the research results, an algorithm for estimating post-cyclic mechanical parameters of mixed clayey soils, without conducting cyclic and post-cyclic tests, is suggested.

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A series of degradable films was prepared, and 2 formulas of polyethylene (PE) films with the highest degradable performance were experimentally determined. These films contained 3.43% and 0.44% stearate, and were denoted as PE-3 and PE-4, respectively. Their biodegradability was studied in a laboratory-controlled composting test using ordinary PE film (OPEF) as a control. Contrast composting experiments indicated that the biodegradability of untreated samples was very low, and that the biodegradation rates of PE films after natural aging were significantly higher. FT-IR analysis showed that OPEF changed little after the composting experiment, and that PE-3 and PE-4 showed a carbonyl absorption peak at 1720 cm −1 , whose intensity increased with increased composting time. Analysis of the viscometric-average molecular weight revealed that it changed little for untreated film but significantly decreased for aged films, especially PE-3, after the composting experiments.