An experimental study of the long-term deformation characteristics of artificial structured soft clay

The structure of soft clay has a great effect on its deformation characteristics, and it shows difference in strength as affected by such factors as origins, which also leads to some differences in the soil deformation characteristics. In order to examine the effect of structural strength on the long-term deformation characteristics of soft clay, creep tests under unconsolidated-undrained conditions were conducted for artificial soil with the same moisture content and different structural strengths. The results show that for soft clay with certain structure, when the deviatoric stress is less than the structural yielding stress, the soil structure has a small yield failure, and its creep deformation is small, generally less than 2%. With the increasing deviatoric stress, the soil structure appears lots of structural failure, especially when the structural yield stress is exceeded, and the strain develops quickly, eventually evolves into a critical strain. Under the same deviatoric stress, the stronger the soil structure, the smaller the creep deformation at any time. The soil structural strength is taken as a quantitative parameter, which represents the level of the soil structure and is used to establish a long-term deformation prediction model considering the influences of structure.