Threshold fines content and behavior of sands with nonplastic silts

Abstract

The threshold fines content of a sand with nonplastic fines represents the silt content where the soil transitions from being a sand matrix, with silt particles entirely contained in the voids between the sands, to being a silt matrix that contains isolated sand grains. A laboratory testing program was performed on a series of mixtures of sand and silt, with silt contents ranging from 0% to 45%, to determine if the friction angle, cyclic resistance, and normalized dissipated energy per unit volume required to initiate liquefaction changed based upon the silt content of the soil relative to the threshold fines content. These data were evaluated with respect to whether the silt content of the specimens was below the lower-bound threshold fines content or above the upper-bound threshold fines content. It was determined that soils above the upper-bound threshold fines content had lower friction angles, lower cyclic resistances, and required less normalized dissipated energy per unit volume to initiate liquefaction than soils below the lower-bound threshold fines content. It was also shown that under the larger strains experienced during monotonic testing, the friction angle did not reach a constant value until it was well above the upper-bound limiting silt content.