Intact soft clay’s critical response to dynamic stress paths on different combinations of principal stress orientation

Comprehensive tests on Hangzhou intact soft clay were performed, which were used to obtain the soils’ critical response to undrained dynamic stress paths under different combinations of principal stress orientation. The different combinations included cyclic principal stress rotation (CPSR for short), cyclic shear with abrupt change of principal stress orientation (CAPSO for short) and cyclic shear with fixed principal stress orientation (CFPSO for short). On one side, under all these stress paths, samples have obvious strain inflection points and shear bands, and the excess pore water pressure is far from the level of initial effective confining pressure at failure. Stress paths of major principal stress orientation (α) alternating from negative and positive have quite different influence on soil’s properties with those in which α is kept negative or positive. On the other side, due to the soil’s strongly initial anisotropy, samples under double-amplitudes CPSR and CAPSO (or single-amplitude CPSR and CFPSO) have similar properties on dynamic shear strength and pore water pressure development tendency when α is kept within ±45°, while have quite different properties when α oversteps ±45°.