Monotonic and Cyclic Behavior of Chiang Mai Sand Under Simple Shear Mode

Record of damages and casualties caused by earthquakes in Thailand reveals that Chiang Mai, the second largest province of Thailand, has faced the great threat among other provinces. Triaxial tests, standard penetration tests, and multichannel analysis of surface wave have been recently performed to understand the dynamic response of Chiang Mai ground. However, the cyclic simple shear test, which could convincingly represent the real seismic ground shaking under repeated horizontal shear force, has not been conducted yet. Therefore, this paper aims to characterize the behaviors of Chiang Mai sand under monotonic and cyclic loadings using a direct simple shear apparatus. Sand specimens taken from the Ping River were prepared by dry deposition technique. The mobilized friction angle at the critical state measured by the direct simple shear test is equal to 37. 3° which is 9 % less than that measured by direct shear box test. This paper also provides the appropriate dynamic properties of Chiang Mai sand with the shear strain level <2 % for any practical purpose. Test results showed that the normalized shear modulus agrees well with other investigators while the damping ratio is noticeably smaller than the lower-bound range for sand reported in the past studies. © 2012 Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht.