Cyclic response of saturated silts

• The cyclic response significantly depends on whether the specimens are subjected to stress reversal or not.
• Increasing confining stress has a critical effect on the cyclic resistance of reconstituted NC and lightly OC silt.
• Cyclic strength was observed to decrease with the initial shear stress beyond 60–70% of p׳i.
• A ten folds increase in the loading frequency causes significant decrease in the generation of excess pore pressure.
• The cyclic degradation increases with increasing CSRtx for OCR values of 1 to 4.

Softening and strength loss of sands with increasing excess pore water pressure under repeated loads is well-known. However, extensive damage to the built environment also occurs at the sites underlain by fine grained soils during seismic shaking. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the factors affecting cyclic behavior of saturated low-plastic silt through laboratory testing. For this purpose, an extensive laboratory testing program including conventional monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests was carried out over reconstituted silt samples. The effects of the inherent soil properties and the effects of loading characteristics on the cyclic response of saturated low-plastic reconstituted silt samples were examined separately. Based on the test results, a model was introduced to estimate the effect of initial shear stress on the cyclic response. Besides, liquefaction susceptibility of the samples was examined via current liquefaction susceptibility criteria.