Closure to 'Experimental Validation of Suction Stress Characteristic Curve from Nonfailure Triaxial K_0 Consolidation Tests' by Seboong Oh, Ning Lu, Tae-Kyung Kim, and Young Huy Lee

摘要

The writers thank the discusser for raising the issue of the uniqueness of the suction stress determined from the triaxial K_0 consolidation tests under unsaturated conditions. Under the triaxial K_0 consolidation conditions, the unique effective stress relationship is defined linearly by the η_0 defined by Eq. (15) of the original paper as q= η_0p'(1) For the full saturation, p' = p - u_w. However, Eq. (2) in the discussion is derived assuming u_w = 0 and p' =p. The discusser apparently evaluated η_0 as the average value of q/p from the saturated stress states, whereas the writers calculated η_0 by the slope of the linear regression of the experimental data in the p-q axis from Eq. (1). This is the reason why there is a difference in the η_0 value between the discussion (η_0 = 0.83) and the original paper (η_0 = 0.80) for the Iksan soil.