Effects of inherent and induced anisotropies on strength and deformation characteristics of soft clay

Abstract: To better distinguish the effects of inherent and stress-induced anisotropies on deformation and strength, consolidated undrained tests on remolded and intact soft clay specimens are carried out using a hollow cylinder apparatus. The tests are conducted by maintaining a fixed principal stress direction with angle from the vertical direction together with two different fixed values of the intermediate principal stress coefficient b. It is observed that both the friction angle and normalized strength decrease with the increase of , then have a small growth. However, the variance is not significant for different remolded clay species, so the stress-induced anisotropy caused by change of the principal stress direction has a smaller effect on the strength. Moreover, the inherent anisotropy has a great influence on the stress-strain characteristics and magnitude of pore pressure, and almost no effect on development mode of the pore pressure. Therefore, this study can serve as references for further study on the anisotropy of soft clay under the principal stress rotation.