Assessment of the Numerical Behavior of Remolded and Undisturbed Clayey Soil

Abstract

The simulation of soil behavior using finite element analysis depends mainly on the input parameters considered in analysis, moreover, in the case of clayey soil, most of the experimental studies for small models are performed on remolded samples because of difficulty of providing undisturbed soils. This leads to unreal results for numerical analysis as the validation process of numerical results is performed on remolded sample. It was conducted experimental work on remolded clay including load-settlement tests of model footing at three states on undrained cohesion (cu), and then performed unconfined compression tests at the same undrained cohesion. After that, performing numerical modeling of the model footing from the data of unconfined compression tests. It was observed that the value of the modulus of elasticity in clay from unconfined test considering the initial tangent is low for remolded state compared to the findings of the previous research. Moreover, great care must be taken in selecting the elasticity modulus in performing the numerical analysis of the clayey soil, however, for undisturbed clay it is greater than remolded, the difference in the value is up to two times for stiff clay in the case of large scale footing, while it was reaches about four times.