HYDRIC AND CREEP EFFECTS ON LONG TERM DEFORMATIONS OF ROCKFILL EMBANKMENTS

摘要

The paper describes the fundamentals of rock fill collapse and creep and illustrates its relevance through the simulation of the field behavior of a 40m high rock fill embankment.1 INTRODUCTION AND BACKGROUNDRecent research on the mechanisms leading to the macroscopic collapse phenomena observed in rockfill has stressed the fundamental effect of Relative Humidity (Alonso & Oldecop, 2000; Oldecop & Alonso, 2001, 2003). Collapse is associated with particle breakage and the velocity of particle breakage in a loaded rockfill depends on the material toughness, the stress intensity and the relative humidity prevailing at the crack tips. A phenomenological model, which incorporates the basic concepts, formulated in terms of hardening plasticity, was proposed by Oldecop & Alonso (2001). The elastoplastic compressibility model, initially developed, relied also on suction controlled testing initially performed on large diameter oedometer cells and later in triaxial chambers (Chávez & Alonso, 2003; Oldecop & Alonso, 2004).