Cyclic and post-cyclic monotonic behavior of crushed conglomerate rockfill material under dry and saturated conditions

The seismic behavior of two conglomerate rockfill materials used in two high rockfill dams,subjected to earthquake loads, has been studied. in order to evaluate the dynamic behavior, an extensiveseries of monotonic and cyclic tests were carried out on large cylindrical specimens of conglomeraterockfill materials using triaxial tests. this paper first studies the effects of drainage (dry, saturation)conditions on the mechanical behavior of conglomerate rockfills at two compaction levels, and grainsize distribution subjected to monotonic loading. loading frequency and drainage condition effects onspecimen behavior have been studied under cyclic loads under both isotropic and anisotropic initial stressconditions. to study any sign of material degradation due to cyclic loading, the post-cyclic monotonicstressstrain curves were compared under ``dry'' and ``saturated'' conditions. geotechnical parameters tobe used in static and dynamic numerical analyses models have also been presented.