In Fig. 1, the small
figure in the right top corner shows a good correlation when characterizing
the unconfined compressive strength, qu, by the parameter
eot=Aw as presented by Lorenzo and Bergado (2004). Those qu
data obtained from Lorenzo (2005) cover a range of cement contents,
water contents, and curing times, as shown in Table 1. Thus,
the parameter eot=Aw is proven to be sufficient to characterize the
strength of cement-treated clay. However, with further investigation
as illustrated in the main figure, the scattered data have different
tendencies for different remolding water contents, w, which does
not include water in cement slurry. The parameter w is selected to
represent the water content in this case because the mixing design
refers to this value. For the same eot=Aw ratio, the strength of a
mixture with greater water content tends to be less. The same tendency
for strength reduction with greater water content at the same
eot=Aw ratio can also be observed for air-cement-treated clays, as
shown in Figs. 2(a) and 2(b). These figures present the results of
air-cement-treated clay from the Ota ward of Tokyo with w from
138–194% and from the Chuo ward with w 300–400%, respectively.
The data was obtained after a curing time of 28 days and
covers mixtures with densities, water contents, and cement contents
tabulated in Table 2. This indicates that although the parameter
eot=Aw is effective for characterizing the strength of wet cementtreated
clay when the saturation degree approaches 100%, the
use of the parameter for air-cement-treated clay with lesser saturation
levels is unsatisfactory. The influence of a wide range of water
contents cannot be properly reflected. In subsequent sections, a new
parameter that can consider these effects will be proposed