Drained deformation behavior of anisotropic sands during cyclic rotation of principal stress axes

A series of drained tests for sands with inherent fabric anisotropy were conducted with an automatic hollow cylinder apparatus. The samples were subjected to cyclic rotation of principal stress axes while the magnitudes of effective principal stresses were maintained constant. The evolution of strain components and the volumetric strain with number of cycles, the relationship between the shear stress and shear strain components, and the flow rule of sands were investigated. It is found that plastic deformation is induced due to principal stress axes' rotation alone without variation in the magnitudes of effective principal stresses. The contractive volumetric strain accumulates steadily with the increasing number of cycles; however, its accumulation rate is lowered with its progressive accumulation. The results also exhibit obvious noncoaxiality between the directions of strain increment and stress, and the noncoaxiality shows segmentation characteristics during the rotation of principal stress axes. Meanwhile, special attention was paid to the significant role of the intermediate principal stress parameter b[b=(σ₂^'-σ₃^')/(σ₁^'-σ₃^')] in the deformation behavior of sands during cyclic rotation of principal stress axes. It is found that the volumetric strain and the shear modulus ratio of the jth cycle to the first cycle increase with the increase in the b value under otherwise identical conditions. The effects of the relative density, effective mean normal stress, and deviatoric stress ratio on sand deformation behavior are also addressed in this work.