Experimental Study on Creep Characteristics of Structural Soft Clay under Lateral Unloading Condition

Triaxial undrained creep tests under lateral unloading condition were carried out on the soft clay obtained from Ruian, Wenzhou, China to study the influence of lateral unloading path and structural properties on time-strain curves, isochronous curves and other typical creep properties. A creep stabilization time model of soft clay under lateral unloading condition was built to analyze the relationship between strain rate and creep failure criterion of soil, and then applied to structural soft clay soils with different stress paths from different regions to verify its applicability. The results show that creep failure occurred as the ratio of unloading to initial consolidation stress reached 0.2–0.3, and that the deformation of the soft clay can be divided into four stages, i.e., instantaneous deformation, decaying creep, isokinetic creep and accelerated creep. When soil samples under different confining pressures are in the accelerated creep stage, there is a linear relationship between logarithm of strain rate and creep time; the critical line of accelerated creep can be used as a criterion for the unloading creep failure of structural soft clay. The creep stabilization time of structural soft clay is dictated by its structural properties. The axial strain of Wenzhou soft clay increased with an increase in the consolidation confining pressure when the lateral unloading creep failure occurred. Influenced by creep, the cohesion of structural soft clay under unloading condition declined more than 50%, while the internal friction angle remained basically unchanged, resulting in severe attenuation of the long-term strength of shallow structural soft clays and small strains of creep failure, which should be paid more attention to during construction and monitoring.