Liquefaction Susceptibility and Characterization of Rebound Response of Micaceous Sand

Micaceous soils are considered as problematic soils for highway and railway embankments. The presence of mica particles in embankment soil causes differential settlements, which affects the overlying pavement layers in the form of rutting, potholes, warping of bituminous layers, and other serviceability issues. Mica particles are flaky, fragile, platy, cohesionless, and rebound/elastic in nature. The presence of mica particles in micaceous soils causes unique geometric arrangements in the form of bridging and ordering, which affects the mechanical response of sand. Moreover, cohesionless soils are susceptible to liquefaction under high-strain dynamic loading. Therefore, it becomes indispensable to study the rebound and dynamic response of cohesionless micaceous sand under loading–unloading conditions. The current study investigated the liquefaction susceptibility and characterization of the rebound response of micaceous sand under different dynamic loading and boundary conditions. The dynamic response of micaceous sand was studied in terms of shear modulus, stiffness degradation, damping ratio, and pore water pressure ratio. The rebound nature of micaceous sand was studied in terms of dissipated pore pressure (difference of maximum and minimum pore pressure in each loading cycle) under dynamic loading conditions. The liquefaction susceptibility of micaceous sand was found to reduce with the increase in mica content.