Reconstructing oedometric compression curves for selecting design parameters

The mineral structure of soft clays is extremely fragile. Sampling operations and laboratory handling causes unavoidable disturbance. Undisturbed sampling is a theoretical concept since the stress release imposes disturbance. Consolidation tests on disturbed samples provide 1D-compression curves very different from field response, which leads to inaccurate settlement estimates. Among the approaches for curve reconstruction, Schmertmann's method is probably the most commonly adopted in engineering practice. However, it presents difficulties in determining preconsolidation stress. The paper primarily addresses Schmertmann's and Nagaraj et al.â s propositions and discuss their advantages and shortcomings. A new approach for reconstructing the 1D-compression curve is proposed with the main objective of being independent of the interpretation of the experimental results. The validity was examined by comparing the reconstructed curves obtained by other methods. Experimental results on high and low-quality specimens have been analyzed, as well. The results revealed that the reconstructed curves for the cases analyzed are almost unique and independent of specimen quality. The proposed method allows both graphical and analytical implementation and the reconstructed curves are unaffected by experimental curve interpretation.The accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author