On the shearing behaviour of an artificially cemented soil

Ground improvement by cementation is a technique widely used because of the easiness of application and relatively low cost. To date, however, there is no global understanding of the behaviour of artificially cemented soil with respect to its dosage, so that in practice methodologies still rely on previous used scenarios rather than scientific facts. This paper presents results of low-to-high-pressure triaxial tests performed on pure and cemented specimens of decomposed granite where the dosage was controlled, chosen as a function of the ratio of porosity to volumetric cement content or adjusted porosity/cement index. The behaviour of the cemented soil was analysed in terms of peak strength and failure envelopes, stress dilatancy and state boundary surfaces, on which the influence of the porosity/cement index was examined.