Intrinsic Compression Behavior of Remolded and Reconstituted Clays-Reappraisal

Evaluating the impacts of soil structure on mechanical behavior for natural sedimentary clays is an important issue in geotechnical engineering. Burland introduced void index for normalizing the compression curves of various remolded and reconstituted clays to obtain the intrinsic compression line, which provides a reference framework to assess the in-situ compression behavior. However, it does not quantitatively account for the effects of initial water content on compressive behavior of remolded and reconstituted clays and the initial water contents of clays are not always limited to 1.0 - 1.5 times the liquid limits defined by Burland. A modification based on collected tests data was presented on the expressions of  and  defined by Burland. Extensive oedometer test data were also collected on various remolded and reconstituted soils with distinct liquid limits and initial water contents to verify the validity of modified expressions. A normalized compression line deduced by intrinsic compression line is proposed in the e-log p plot, which can be used to evaluate the effects of soil structure quantitatively on the intact compressive behavior for natural sedimentary clays.

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