In this study, effects of cement content and curing time on the compressive stress-strain relationship and California bearing ratio (CBR) value of artificially cemented sand cured up to 7 days was investigated. The CBR study was focused on investigating the sensitivity of this non-destructive test to measure the changes in the compacted cemented sand properties during construction (limited curing time). The cement content in the cemented sand was varied up to 6 % by weight. The strength, modulus, and unit weight of the artificially cemented sand varied from, 60 to 1250 kPa, 14 to 290 MPa, and 15.98 to 18.33 kN/m3, respectively. The CBR values for cemented sand, compacted using the standard proctor method, varied from 8 to 230 %. Compressive stress-strain relationship of cemented sand was represented by a non-linear relationship. Relationship between compressive properties of cemented sand and the CBR was also investigated. The variation of compressive strength, modulus, and CBR values with curing time were represented using hyperbolic relationships. Finite element method (FEM) was used to model the CBR test, based on the data obtained from the unconfined compression tests for 1.5, 3, and 6 % cemented sand. In the FEM analyses the cemented sand was modeled using linear elastic-perfectly plastic constitutive relationship with Mohr-Coulomb failure criteria. The ratio of predicted to measured CBR values varied from 0.67 to 1.31.
A concise algorithm is introduced to perform slope stability analysis to determine the geometry of the critical slip circle and the corresponding factor of safety without the need for iterative calculations. An optimisation process is performed using the developed algorithm for various soil properties and slope geometries to determine the critical slip circle within all possible slip circles and obtain the factor of safety. The performance of the algorithm is compared with three-dimensional finite-element analysis using the strength reduction method and benchmark studies conducted previously. It is found that the developed algorithm shows good agreement with the previous studies and three-dimensional finite-element analysis. The factors of safety are calculated for a wide range of parameters and variations in these factors are expressed using linear and quadratic equations to establish a correlation between factor of safety and five parameters: cohesion, friction angle and unit weight of soil, as well as slope height and slope angle. The correlation coefficients introduced in this study provide a convenient way for practising engineers to estimate factors of safety that are applicable to uniform slopes.
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