Elastic response of unsaturated soils
Résumé
The elastic behavior of unsaturated soils subjected to very small strains (smaller than 10−5) was studied in the past years using different experimental devices (mainly resonant columns). The bender elements technique, now extensively used in soil mechanics, offers an efficient alternative to measure elastic properties of soils. Furthermore to enrich the common bender elements testing results providing only shear modulus values, an evolution of the bender elements technique, named bender-extender elements is presented here. The present study provides new results about the elastic properties of intermediate unsaturated soils made of mixtures of sand and clay. The results in terms of elastic properties are presented as a function of the suction level.