English (United Kingdom)

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/featured_content/oa?rat=en

https://curated-unify.zendy.io/wp-json/zendy-region/v1/highlighted_journal/

Zendy Plus

Presents the access of premium content as premium feature

Premium Content

Presents the keyphrase highlighting as premium feature

Keyphrase Highlighting

Presents the summarisation as premium feature

Summarisation

Insights

Presents the pdf analysis as premium feature

PDF Analysis

Presents the zaia usage as premium feature

ZAIA

Zendy Tools

Zendy Open

Determining the shear strength of rockfill is a key task for the design and stability analysis of rockfill structures. When direct shear tests are performed, the well-established ASTM standard requires that specimen width and thickness must be at least 10 and 6 times the maximum particle size (dmax), respectively. When the value of dmax is very large, performing such tests in laboratory with field rockfill becomes difficult or impossible. Four scaling-down techniques were proposed in the past to obtain a modeled sample excluding oversize particles: scalping, parallel, replacement, and quadratic. It remains unclear which of the four scaling-down techniques yields reliable shear strength of field rockfill. In this paper, an extensive review is presented on existing experimental results to analyze the capacity of each scaling-down technique to determine the field rockfill shear strength. The analyses show that previous researches followed an inappropriate methodology to validate or invalidate a scaling-down technique through a direct comparison between the shear strengths of modeled and field samples. None of the four scaling-down techniques was shown to be able or unable to predict the field rockfill shear strength by extrapolation. The analyses further show that the minimum ratios of specimen size to dmax dictated by well-established standards are largely used but are too small to eliminate the specimen size effect. In most cases, this practice results in shear strength overestimation. The validity or invalidity of scaling-down techniques based on experimental results obtained by using the minimum ratios is uncertain. Recommendations are given for future studies.

Determination of the Shear Strength of Rockfill from Small-Scale Laboratory Shear Tests: A Critical Review