Behaviour of saturated railway track foundation materials during undrained cyclic loading

This paper presents results of a series of hollow cylinder tests carried out to investigate the undrained behaviour of saturated railway track foundation materials during cyclic loading involving principal stress rotation. Four sand–clay mixes representative of real railway track foundation materials were investigated. It was found that moderate additions of clay (up to ∼14% by weight) increased the cyclic shear stress threshold at which significant excess pore pressures started to accumulate. After the cyclic shear stress threshold had been exceeded, the rate of pore pressure increase with the logarithm of axial strain was greatest for the material having a clay content of 11%. Excess pore pressure generation reduced with increasing intergranular and global void ratio, with the global void ratio being perhaps the more useful indicator because of the reduced amount of scatter and higher correlation of the idealized relationship.