Visualization and flow characteristics of liquefied transparent sand in shaking table tests

Abstract

The effectiveness of using transparent sand materials for simulating the soil behavior under the dynamic loading condition is not clear. In this study, the horizontal pulling tests with iron pipes embedded in were performed on the saturated transparent sand and natural quartz sand to compare the apparent viscosity and pore water pressure of both materials during dynamic tests. The test results show that saturated transparent sand exhibits a similar dynamic characteristics to the natural sand in the liquefied state, evidenced by both showing the non-Newtonian fluid properties of “shear thinning”. The apparent viscosity of transparent sand decreases by 70.2 and 58.9% during and after shaking, respectively, while that of quartz sand decreases by 71.9 and 61.8%, respectively, as the pulling speed increases from 2.2 to 10.6 mm/s. During shaking with the pipe pulling rate of 7.2 mm/s and at the lateral displacement to pipe diameter ratio of δ/D = 4, the apparent viscosity of transparent sand is only 8.8% higher than that of quartz sand. Through visual analysis, transparent sand could effectively exhibit the sand particles’ movement and shear zone evolution during the liquefaction process confirming its capability of simulating the natural sand’s flow behavior under the liquefaction phase. This would eventually provide a powerful visualization methodology to better understand the dynamic behavior of liquefied sand.