Abstract: A series of cyclic simple shear tests was conducted on the rubber-sand mixtures (RSMs) with 7 different rubber contents, under 4 different vertical consolidation pressures (p). The shear moduli and damping ratios of RSMs are evaluated for different shear strain amplitudes and rubber contents. It is shown that: with the increase of the rubber content of RSM, the stress-strain curves drop significantly at the same consolidation pressure, meanwhile the shear modulus of RSM decreases, and the damping ratio, especially small strain damping, increase significantly; the stress-strain curve and the shear modulus of RSM increase with the increase of consolidation pressure while the damping ratio decreases slightly for RSM with a certain rubber content. Increase of rubber content causes earlier attenuation of the generalized curve, proving to be more conducive for the applications of RSM as isolation material. The experimental results agree well with the results available in the literature, implying that the type of testing methods influences insignificantly the shear modulus and damping ratio of RSM.

Key words: rubber-sand mixture (RSM), dynamic shear modulus, damping ratio, cyclic simple shear test, comparison analysis