Acoustic emission characteristics of a dry sandy soil subjected to drained triaxial compression

Acoustic emission (AE) technique that is capable of diagnosing the failure process of stressed materials has rarely reported its application to sandy soils subjected to triaxial compression. In this paper, drained triaxial compression tests incorporating with a high-performance AE measurement system were conducted for dry sands with different confining stresses and initial relative densities. Generally, an increased confining stress or initial relative density generates more acoustic emissions, while there also exist exceptions due to different failure patterns. A good resemblance between stress–strain and AE hit rate–strain relations was observed, and power functions between the mechanical parameters and AE hit rate were well established regardless of different confining stresses and initial relative densities. Besides, the behavioral state of yield and peak during compression could be also evaluated by AE hit rate, compared with conventional stress–strain determination. Particularly, the peak AE hit rate is found not always synchronous to but fluctuating at around the peak stress depending on different failure patterns, which might provide beneficial insights into the incipient failure of sands. The present good consistencies suggest that AE characteristics could be used as alternative parameters to evaluate and even predict the mechanical behavior of dry sands.