Study on development of arching action of sand using an earth pressure cell

Abstract

Stress transformation from yielding part of soil on to adjacent rigid part is known as the arching action of soil. Terzaghi’s trapdoor test was an important milestone in development of theories on soil arching, soil arching has both active and passive effects. Stresses acting on underground structures need to be estimated correctly for economical design and evaluation of the performance of those structures accounting the effect of soil arching. An experimental approach in measuring real-time stress variation on buried structures due to arching effect of soil is discussed in this paper. Experimental study was done to study the effect of both active and passive soil arching in dry and saturated sandy soil using effective and total earth pressure cells and the stress variation on underground structures was analyzed. The test results were compared with Terzaghi’s arching theory. Results conclude that in passive soil arching stress transform to structures increase with stress increment where, as the stress transform to structures reduce with settlement of the structure. In addition, settling of surrounding soil causes increase in the stress transform to structures.