The strength and deformation characteristics of artificial frozen soils are quite sensitive to temperature, confining pressure, and water content. To investigate these effects, a series of triaxial compressive tests on frozen Harbin silty clay were conducted at temperatures of -5 °C, -10 °C, and -15 °C under different confining pressures and water contents. From the stress-strain curves under lower water content and confining pressure, strain-softening behavior was observed. The modified Duncan-Chang (MDC) model was employed to describe the constitutive relations of artificial frozen silty clay while considering the strain-softening effects. After introducing statistical damage (SD) theory, an SD constitutive model with the failure strain as a random variable was proposed, which is able to overcome the drawbacks of the MDC model. The predicted SD model results are found to be consistent with the experimental results.
Keywords: artificial frozen silty clay; constitutive relation; statistical damage; triaxial experiment.