Non-coaxiality of sand under bi-directional shear loading.

This study aims to investigate the effect of consolidation shear stress magnitude on the shear behaviour and non-coaxiality of soils. In previous drained bi-directional simple shear test on Leighton Buzzard sand, it is showed that the level of non-coaxiality, which is indicated by the angle difference between the principal axes of stresses and the corresponding principal axes of strain rate tensors, is increased by increasing angle difference between the direction of consolidation shear stress and secondary shearing. This paper further investigated the relation and includes results with higher consolidation shear stresses. Results agree with the previous relation, and further showed that increasing consolidation shear stresses decreased the level of non-coaxiality in tests with angle difference between 0° and 90°, and increased the level of non-coaxiality in tests with angle difference between 90° and 180°.