Issue 50

G. Belokas, Frattura ed Integrità Strutturale, 50 (2019) 354-369; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.50.30 359 Sample 1 2 3 4 5 Specimen 1.1 1.2 1.3 2.1 2.2 2.3 3.1 3.2 3.3 4.1 4.2 4.3 5.1 5.2 5.1 σ n (kPa) 100 300 500 100 300 500 100 300 500 100 300 500 100 300 500 τ (kPa) 56 140 218 56 130 208 69 151 222 48 143 241 76 134 196 Table 1 : Example for direct shear test. 0 50 100 150 200 250 0 50 100 150 200 250 300 350 400 450 500 550 Shear stress τ (kPa) Normal stress σ n ' (kPa) Exp Data Best estimate Characteristic 1 Characteristic 2 Characteristic 3 Figure 3 : Failure envelopes, best estimate and characteristic envelopes. The typical test procedure of applying on the three different specimens of each soil sample the σ n = 100, 300 and 500 kPa normal stresses respectively, may raise a question concerning the independence of the observations. An alternative is to consider a single variable model for τ on each one of the three σ n values (in our case n =5 samples) and then apply a t-test on the observed τ values, which in our example leads to Table 2. Applying a linear regression on σ n , τ p=5% pairs we get the following characteristic values: c k3 =14.02 kPa and (tan φ ) k3 = 0.38056 (characteristic 3). This approach, overcomes the issues concerning the independence of observation and gives similar results to characteristic 1 (Fig.3), however, it does not give a standard error of the parameters. For this specific case, the maximum standard error on τ lies close to the previously determined standard error of the cohesion. Specimen 1 2 3 σ n (kPa) 100 300 500 τ m (kPa) 61 139.6 212.8 SD (kPa) 11.27 8.14 10.83 n 5 5 5 SE (kPa) 5.0398413 3.641428 4.841487 a /2 0.05 0.05 0.05 t n-1 -2.131847 -2.13185 -2.13185 τ p =5%,min 50.255831 131.837 202.4787 Table 2 : Application of t – test on the values of the observed τ for each σ n . Another approach often used in engineering practice is to apply a t-test on the determined c and tan φ pairs from each sample (again n =5 for the examined case). This approach gives c m =23.95 kPa, (tan φ ) m =0.37950 (i.e. same as before), SE c = u c =6.6 kPa and SE tanφ = u tanφ =0.02183 (i.e. greater than before). Applying Eqs.(15,16) for a probability p=5% we get the following cautious estimate of strength parameters: c k4 =9.8 kPa and (tan φ ) k4 =0.33296 (characteristic 4), which are unrealistically conservative, as can been in Fig.4, due to the higher uncertainties.