Drained responses of granular soil sheared under inclined principal stress axes: Impact of sample preparation

Previous studies have found that the sample preparation method and the resulting sand fabric have significant effect on sand behavior. In the present study, sand specimens were prepared in the laboratory by dry deposition (DD) method and moist tamping (MT) method to create two distinct initial fabrics of sand. Drained hollow cylinder tests were carried out on these specimens under fixed but inclined principal stress axes. Test results show that the major principal stress direction has greater influence on the development of both deviatoric and volumetric strains for DD samples than for MT. DD samples tend to have a higher stress ratio R corresponding to the characteristic state point than MT series. Moreover, the shear strength of DD samples is higher than MT, but significantly influenced by the major principal stress direction. DD samples show stronger non-coaxiality than MT samples under low stress ratio (R ≤ 0.1).