Investigation of Stress-Strain Behavior of Plastic Concrete Using Monotonic Triaxial Compression Tests

In this paper, the mechanical behavior of plastic concrete being used in the cut-off walls of earth dams has been studied. To do the task, triaxial compression tests on the specimens in various ages and mix designs under different confining pressures have been done and the stress-strain behavior of such materials and their strength parameter changes has been experimentally investigated. It has been observed that increasing the confining pressures applied on the specimens causes the material behavior to be alike the more ductile materials and the compressive strength increases considerably as well. Moreover, a parametric study has been carried out to investigate the influence of essential parameters affecting the shear strength parameters of these materials. According to the research, increasing the coarse to fine aggregates ratio leads to the increase of compressive strength of the specimens as well as the increase of the cohesion and internal friction angle of the materials. Furthermore, the bentonite content decrease and the cement factor increase results in an increase of the cohesion parameter of plastic concretes and decrease of the internal friction angle of such materials.