INVESTIGATION OF PROGRESSIVE FAILURE IN COMPOSITE SOILS USING AN X-RAY CT SCANNER

摘要

The objective of this paper is to investigate progressive failure of a composite soil subjected to unconfined compression using a special compression apparatus adapted to an X-ray CT scanner system. The composite soil used in this study is a so called 'light weight soil' made by mixing dredged slurry, cement and air foam. Thus, the effect of air foams on the failure of the composite soil is discussed by conducting the sets of experiments with and without air foams. In addition to conventional unconfined compression test, resulted strain localization behavior is visualized and here, proper image processing analysis with statistical analysis related to X-ray CT data is indispensable in order to enhance the CT image data. Finally, a new systematic test procedure using a newly developed compression test apparatus is proposed and a better understanding of failure of the composite soil is obtained.