Testing and modelling total suction effects on compressibility and creep of crushable granular material

Abstract Recent works have shown that delayed events of particle crushing are partially responsible of creep deformation in granular materials, and that Stress Corrosion Cracking promoted by high humidity within particles is the source of this mechanism. A number of experimental studies have focused on creep behaviour of water saturated samples and wetting-deformation after soaking dry material. However, there are few evidences of the effect of varying total suction in time-dependent deformation of partially saturated crushable material, and this mechanism have been rarely considered in constitutive models. The aims of this paper are to present experimental evidence of the effect of total suction on compressibility and creep of sandy sized samples from crushed rock, and to propose a simple one-dimensional elasto-plastic modelling approach based on the enhancement of an existing model. Oedometric compression tests at different total suctions are presented. The results show that compressibility and creep strains increase with both stress and humidity. The model proposed uses a time-dependent hardening law coupling suction with the amount of particle breakage. Based on preliminary calibrations, the model captures the effect of suction and time-dependent behaviour over a large range of total suction.