( (2007) Lade) - Experimental Study and Analysis of Creep and Stress Relaxation in Granular Materials

GSP 173 Advances in Measurement and Modeling of Soil Behavior
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EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF CREEP AND STRESS

RELAXATION IN GRANULAR MATERIALS
Poul V. Lade1, Member, ASCE
ABSTRACT: Experiments have been performed to study the time-dependent

behavior of Antelope Valley sand in triaxial compression. Observations of time
effects in tests with constant strain rate, creep tests at different stress levels and stress
relaxation tests initiated at different amounts of axial strain are presented. Some of the
drained creep behavior was reported previously (Lade and Liu 1998) and based on
analysis of this behavior, a model for creep in sand has been presented (Lade and Liu
2001). Additional experiments on strain rate effects and stress relaxation of the same
sand are reported here and compared with results for creep behavior in sand. It is
found that the classic time effects found in most materials, i.e. increasing stiffness and
strength with increasing strain rate and corresponding creep and stress relaxation
behavior, are not observed in sand.
INTRODUCTION
One of the outstanding issues in modeling of soil behavior is the correct
representation of time dependent behavior as exemplified in effects of loading or
strain rate, creep and stress relaxation. It was recently observed (Day 2005) that the
long term settlement of granular fills “plays a crucial role in the development
potential of the land and the settlement of structures founded on the fill.” Significant
settlement due to self weight of these recently placed fills is often observed, and part
of this is due to creep and part is due to collapse of the grain structure caused by
changes in the moisture content of the fill material. Soil creep and relaxation also
cause long-term deformation and pressures on buildings, bridge abutments, earth
retaining structures, and earth slopes. Excessive deformation with time may cause
structures to fail.
________________________
1
Professor and Chair, Department of Civil Engineering, The Catholic University of
America, Washington, D.C. 20064, U.S.A., Lade@cua.edu.
Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Advances in Measurement and Modeling of Soil Behavior
Another mode of soil collapse is instability and liquefaction: Granular materials

may become unstable when exposed to certain stress paths inside the failure surface
(Lade 1994). In nature, especially fine silty sands are susceptible to liquefaction under
static and cyclic loading conditions (Yamamuro and Lade 1999), but these fine silty
sands also exhibit considerable creep behavior (Lade 1994), and they are therefore
affected by time effects. Drained creep at a given stress state causes the plastic yield
surface to move out and away from the current stress state, and the sand consequently
becomes stiffer in the region immediately outside the stress point. Increasing amounts
of drained creep therefore require increasingly high stress differences or decreasingly

low effective confining pressures to render the sand unstable. Thus, time effects play
significant roles in the behavior of soils.
Prediction of creep, relaxation and loading rate effects in granular materials
requires a constitutive model with a capability to account for time-dependent
behavior. In this presentation the time-dependent behavior is incorporated in an
existing single hardening plasticity model, whose capabilities have been demonstrated
in the literature. The advantage of adding this capability to the existing model is that
prediction of creep under three-dimensional conditions is immediately incorporated in
the model. Because the time effects modeled here correspond to rates lower than
those employed in conventional triaxial testing, emphasis has been placed on time
effects at working stress conditions away from failure. Although failure may be
affected by rate effects, especially at higher rates, this effect is relatively small at the
rates and times considered here (see e.g. Yamamuro and Lade 1993), and only small
modifications, within the scatter in the data, would be required due to effect on
failure. This effect has consequently not been taken into account in the study
presented below.
PREVIOUS STUDIES
Time-dependent behavior of soils has been investigated in a number of
experimental studies, and comprehensive reviews of time effects and models for time-
dependent behavior have been presented in the literature (see, e.g., Cristescu 1989;
Feda 1992; Mitchell 1993; Leroueil and Marques 1996; Sheahan and Kaliakin 1996;
Augustesen et al. 2004; Liingaard et al. 2004).
Sands generally creep less than clays at the same stress states (Murayama et al.
1984; Lade et al. 1997), but the amount of creep increases with confining pressure,
particularly after crushing becomes important at high stresses (Yamamuro and Lade
1993). More crushing occurs in loose than in dense sand (Bopp and Lade 1997).
However, fine silty sands, whose structure is metastable and may be susceptible to
instability and liquefaction (Yamamuro and Lade 1997, 1998; Lade and Yamamuro
1997) also show considerable time-effects. In this particle structure the silt particles
may occupy locations at or near the contact points of the larger sand particles. This
particle structure tends to form in the fine range of particle sizes where the attractive
and repulsive forces begin to compete with the gravitational forces (Lade et al. 1998).
Thus, the finer particles wedge between and push the larger particles slightly apart,
and upon application of normal and shear stresses, the fine particles will tend to slide
into the void spaces, allowing the larger particles to move together. Such particle
structures formed in loose silty sands are precarious and unstable, and slippage occurs
easily in such structures. This generates an inherently contractive volumetric
tendency, which under undrained conditions may lead to instability and static
liquefaction (Bjerrum 1973; Lade et al. 1997). Thus, time-dependent behavior in

granular materials may be caused by crushing of sand grains or by collapse of

metastable particle structures.
A study of drained creep in Antelope Valley sand was performed by Lade and Liu
(1998) to (1) investigate the nature of time effects, (2) study whether time-dependent
behavior may be modeled by adding time effects within the framework provided by
work-hardening plasticity theory, and (3) provide data for development of a
constitutive model for soil stress-strain-time behavior. The fine sand had sufficient
permeability to immediately dissipate pore pressures, thus allowing observation of
creep deformations directly after changes in stress. The experiments showed that the
nature of creep strains is similar to that of plastic strains in the sense that they may be
predicted from the framework provided by hardening plasticity theory. In particular,
the potential surface determined from and used for prediction of plastic strains may
also be used for prediction of time-dependent creep strains. It also appears that the
yield surface and the plastic potential surface move out together during creep, and the
point at which to evaluate inelastic strain increment directions is at the current
location of the yield surface and the accompanying plastic potential surface (Lade and
Liu 1998). Prediction of the movement and new location of the yield surface was
attempted on the basis of the change in inelastic work occurring during creep (Lade
1994).
The experimental results also showed that the time-dependent inelastic strains and
inelastic work may be normalized on values of reference plastic work and reference
time. Normalized inelastic work appears to be varying linearly with the logarithm of
normalized time and is independent of confining pressure and stress level (Lade and
Liu 2001).
EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF SAND

The time-dependent behavior of sand was studied in a conventional triaxial
apparatus. Modifications to this equipment were made to improve its capability to
carry out long-term tests with steady stresses and accurate measurements at a constant
temperature. Mechanical equipment with negligible drift in applied pressures and
loads and measurement systems without zero drift or devices in which the zero
position could be verified during experiments were employed for all testing. The
triaxial equipment, the loading systems, the deformation measurement systems, and
the temperature control were explained by Lade and Liu (1998).
The portion of Antelope Valley sand contained between U.S. Sieve No. 60 (0.250
mm) and 200 (0.075 mm) was used for the experiments. This subangular sand
consisted of 16% quartz, 36% feldspar, 24% biotite, 22% dense mineral (45% of the
dense minerals altered to chlorite), and 2% metamorphic lithic (rock) fragments.
Under dry conditions the characteristics of the sand are summarized as follows:
Specific gravity of grains = 2.81, maximum void ratio = 1.24, and minimum void
ratio = 0.98.
Specimens with height = 18.6 cm and diameter = 6.8 cm, corresponding to an
H/D-ratio of 2.75, were prepared by dry pluviation and saturated by the CO2-method.
The structure of the dry deposited fine sand exhibited some collapse upon
introduction of water in the pores. Therefore, at the end of preparation, the saturated
specimens had void ratios between 0.95 and 0.98 with an average of 0.96.

STRAIN RATE EFFECTS IN SAND

Triaxial compression tests were performed on Antelope Valley sand with an
effective confining pressure of 196 kPa and with five different, constant axial strain
rates varying from 0.05 %/min to 3.24 %/min, corresponding to a 65-fold increase in
strain rate. The results of these tests are shown in Figs. 1(a) and 1(b). They indicate
that the influence of strain rate on the characteristics of the stress-strain and volume
change curves is negligible. Thus, the slopes of the curves as well as the strengths are
very little affected by the strain rate. Similar results for sand have been found by
Yamamuro and Lade (1993) and by Matsushita et al. (1999). This departure from
classic time-dependent behavior, according to which the stiffness and the strength
increase with increasing strain rate, is significant, because it indicates that it may not
be possible to employ conventional viscous type models to capture the time-
dependent behavior of sands. Such models have been successfully used to
characterize a number of other materials, including soils such as clays (see Liingaard
et al. (2004) for comprehensive review of time effect models).
Fig. 1. Effects of strain rate on (a) stress-strain, and (b) volume change relations in
triaxial compression test on Antelope Valley sand.
CREEP EFFECTS IN SAND

Conventional triaxial compression tests with constant effective confining pressure
were performed with intermittent creep tests to study the amounts of axial and
volumetric strains accumulating with time at different stress levels. The stress-strain
behavior from one of these tests is shown in Fig. 2(a), and the volume change

Fig. 2. Creep tests at five different stress ratios in triaxial compression test on
Antelope Valley sand.
behavior is shown in Fig. 2(b). Creep stages were initiated at five different principal
stress ratios: 1.63, 2.00, 2.76, 3.49, and 3.85. The open circles shown in Fig. 2
correspond to measurements after 2 min of creep, at which time reasonable steady
measurements could be made consistently. At the stresses where creep was studied,
the initial measurements made at 0.25 min are shown by solid circles along with the
final measurements before the stresses were increased again. As creep proceeds at a
given stress, the plastic yield surface moves out to higher stresses. This may be seen
from the fact that further loading first produces what appears to be elastic reloading.
Such behavior has also been observed in previous studies (e.g. Bjerrum 1973; Lade
1994).
Small decreases in the stress difference occurred at higher stresses due to
continued creep straining and consequent increases in cross-sectional area. This is
because the tests were load controlled rather than stress controlled.
Fig. 2(b) shows that the volumetric strain relations during the five creep stages
appear to be continuations of the volume change curve obtained during primary
loading. This led to the conclusion that the plastic potential surface determined from
and used to predict plastic strain increments may also be used to predict time-
dependent creep strains (Lade and Liu 1998). The experiments also showed that the
yield surface and the plastic potential move out together and inelastic strain increment

directions should be evaluated at the current location of the yield surface and the
accompanying plastic potential surface.
The axial and volumetric strains obtained during each of the five creep stages may
be plotted versus log(time). Such relations were presented before for the Antelope
Valley sand (Lade and Liu 1998, 2001), and they showed essentially linear relations.
This means that on a linear time scale the strain rates decrease with time.
Experiments performed on Antelope Valley sand at other confining pressures
showed similar patterns of creep behavior as explained above.
STRESS RELAXATION EXPERIMENTS

Stress relaxation experiments were performed within conventional triaxial
compression tests with constant effective confining pressure and loaded in a
conventional deformation-controlled 50 kN Wykeham-Farrance loading machine
operated by a stepper motor. By stopping the loading machine and therefore the axial
compression of the triaxial specimen when desired values of deviator stress or axial
strain had been reached, stress relaxation could be observed on the axial load cell
mounted outside the triaxial cell. The frictionless piston bushing allowed accurate
recordings of axial load (Lade and Liu 1998).
The stress-strain and volumetric strain behavior from one of these tests are shown
in Figs. 3(a) and 3(b). The specimen was loaded at a constant axial strain rate of 0.16
%/min. Stress relaxation stages were initiated at seven values of axial strain: 0.34,
1.18, 2.86, 4.17, 6.03, 9.97, and 15.00 %. These values of axial strain correspond to
stress ratios at initiation of relaxation of 1.43, 2.05, 2.73, 3.08, 3.43, 3.87, and 4.07.
The latter stress ratio corresponds to failure of the triaxial specimen. Following each
stress relaxation branch, the specimen was axially loaded again, and the diagrams
indicate that elastic reloading occurred until the plastic stress-strain curves were
reached again. Small amounts of contractive volumetric strains occurred both during
axial stress relaxation and during reloading for the relaxation branches performed at
all stress ratios. Thus, contraction occurred in the radial directions in which the
effective confining pressure is constant and no strain controls were imposed.
Therefore, stress relaxation in one direction in which the strain is held constant
implies nothing about the response in another direction.
Fig. 4 shows the stress relaxation plotted versus log(time) observed for each of the
seven branches. It is clear that stress relaxation is essentially linear with log(time)
within the period of time of one day during which relaxation was observed. This
means that on a linear time scale the relaxation rates decrease with time.
During the stress relaxation tests, the axial deformation was measured with a dial
gage attached to the specimen piston, which was firmly screwed into the specimen
cap. Very small amounts of axial contraction of the specimen were indicated by the
dial gage measurements. These were caused by the reducing load sustained by the
specimen, and this caused the loading machine and the axial load cell to revert
towards their unloaded positions. The resulting slight axial contraction of the
specimen was typically in the order of 0.01 % during stress relaxation over one day.
The underestimate in stress relaxation may be approximated by assuming the
contraction to be elastic, and for elastic moduli varying from 57,000 to 250,000 kPa
(measured during reloading after each stress relaxation event) the additional stress

Fig. 3. Stress relaxation tests at seven different initial stress ratios in triaxial
compression test on Antelope Valley sand.
Fig. 4. Stress relaxation versus log(time) at seven different initial stress ratios in
triaxial compression test on Antelope Valley sand.

change varied from 6 to 25 kPa. This corresponds to 10-20 % of the stress changes
during relaxation. The true relaxed stresses for zero axial strain should be lower by
approximately 5% for all branches.
Fig. 5 shows the change in lateral strains with log(time) for the seven axial stress
relaxation experiments. These changes are very small at the beginning of each branch,
but they begin to increase after approximately 100 min and they increase with
increasing stress level from which stress relaxation is initiated. These lateral strains
are of a magnitude that could not be explained by elastic behavior, i.e. Poisson effect
due to reducing axial stresses. Neither can the zero axial strain be reconciled with
relaxing axial stresses in view of elastic behavior. Thus, time-dependent inelastic
behavior is observed inside the yield surface, which remains stationary at the point of
initiation of stress relaxation.
Fig. 5. Lateral strain versus log(time) during axial stress relaxations at seven different
initial stress ratios in triaxial compression test on Antelope Valley sand.
COMPARISON OF CREEP AND STRESS RELAXATION

The stress relaxation may be compared with the creep observations, both presented
above, by plotting the points of initiation and the end points after a certain amount of
time on the same diagram. To overcome the small differences in the primary stress-
strain curves from the two experiments in Figs. 2 and 3, a common stress-strain curve
is used as the base curve from which creep and stress relaxation are initiated.
Fig. 6 shows the comparison of the creep and stress relaxation for the experiments
on Antelope Valley sand performed with an effective confining pressure of 196 kPa.
The data from both tests are very consistent, and they show how much the axial
strains and stresses change due to creep and relaxation, respectively. Comparable
positions of the curves are obtained after 1440 min = 1 day from both the creep and
the stress relaxation experiments. The points corresponding to an additional 3 days,
i.e. 4 days of creep are also shown in Fig. 6. Very little additional creep occurred over
the latter 3 days.

Fig. 6. Comparison of effects of creep and stress relaxation experiments performed

within two triaxial compression tests on Antelope Valley sand.
It is clear that the two curves resulting after 1 day of creep and stress relaxation,
respectively, are located at quite different positions. The additional stress relaxation
that would have been obtained if zero axial strain had been imposed would have
moved the stress relaxation curve further down, thus making the comparison worse.
The fact that the phenomena of creep, stress relaxation, and strain rate effects are
governed by the same basic time mechanism, such as observed for clays, is denoted
“isotach” behavior, i.e. there is a unique stress-strain-strain rate relation for a given
soil. This means that creep and relaxation properties can be obtained from the same
experiment. The fact that the same basic mechanism can account for creep, stress
relaxation, and rate dependency indicates that the material complies with the
“correspondence principle” according to Sheahan and Kaliakin (1999).
The experiments presented here showed noticeable amounts of creep and
relaxation but no strain rate effects. Further, the stress relaxation and the creep
responses do not appear to follow the correspondence principle, i.e. two different
stress-strain relations are obtained after 1 day, as indicated in Fig. 6. Thus, it appears
that the phenomena of creep, stress relaxation and strain rate effects in sand cannot be
predicted from the same type of test using a viscous type model. The type of behavior
observed for sands is referred to as “nonisotach” behavior.
CREEP AND STRESS RELAXATION OCCUR INSIDE THE PLASTIC

YIELD SURFACE
It was observed above that as creep proceeds with time at a given stress, the plastic
yield surface moves out to higher stresses. This was concluded from the fact that

further loading first produces elastic reloading. Therefore, creep which involves
considerable inelastic strains occurs inside the plastic yield surface.
Similarly, stress relaxation involves large changes in stress with time, but large
plastic strains and movement of the yield surface are not involved in this behavior.
Nevertheless, stress relaxation represents behavior that is complementary to creep
during which inelastic strains and movement of the yield surface does occur. As for
creep, reloading after stress relaxation involves only elastic strains. Thus, stress
relaxation occurs inside the yield surface, which remains located where it was
positioned at the initiation of relaxation.
CONCLUSION
Observations from experiments show that strain rate effects are negligible for
Antelope Valley sand, unlike for clays in which strain rate effects are significant.
Further, the observed stress relaxation behavior was not in “correspondence” with the
measured creep behavior. Therefore, the amount of stress relaxation predicted on the
basis of model parameters determined from creep experiments will be too small. It is
concluded that sands do not exhibit classic viscous effects, and their behavior is
indicated as “nonisotach”, while the typical viscous behavior of clay is termed
“isotach”. Thus, there are significant differences in the time-dependent behavior
patterns of sands and clay. More experimental research is required to understand the
behavior of sand and to develop a more correct constitutive framework for the time-
dependent behavior of sand.
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Behavior of Soils,” Int. J. Geomechanics, ASCE, 4(3): 137-156.
Bjerrum, L. 1973. Problems of soil mechanics and construction on soft clays and
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159.
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pressures. J. Geotech. and Geoenv. Engrg., ASCE, 123(7): 671-677.
Cristescu, N. 1989. Rock Rheology, Kluwer Academic Publishers, Boston.
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liquefaction of sands. Can. Geotech. J., 34(6): 918-928.
10

Lade, P.V., Yamamuro, J.A. and Bopp, P.A. 1997. Influence of Time Effects on
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and V.N. Kaliakin, 1-60.
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Time Dependent Behavior of Soils. Int. J. Geomechanics, ASCE, 4(3): 157-177.
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GSP 173 Advances in Measurement and Modeling of Soil Behavior

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY AND ANALYSIS OF CREEP AND STRESS

Poul V. Lade1, Member, ASCE

ABSTRACT: Experiments have been performed to study the time-dependent

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Another mode of soil collapse is instability and liquefaction: Granular materials

of drained creep therefore require increasingly high stress differences or decreasingly

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

granular materials may be caused by crushing of sand grains or by collapse of

EXPERIMENTAL STUDY OF SAND

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

STRAIN RATE EFFECTS IN SAND

CREEP EFFECTS IN SAND

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

STRESS RELAXATION EXPERIMENTS

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

COMPARISON OF CREEP AND STRESS RELAXATION

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Fig. 6. Comparison of effects of creep and stress relaxation experiments performed

CREEP AND STRESS RELAXATION OCCUR INSIDE THE PLASTIC

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

sands. Prefailure Deformation Characteristics of Geomaterials, M. Jamiolkowski,

Copyright ASCE 2007 Geo-Denver 2007: New Peaks in Geotechnics

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