Abstract: Due to the advantages in lightness, wear-resistance, permeability and high-damping, the rubber particles are mixed with sand to be applied as the lightweight fillers for slopes, subgrades and retaining walls. Thus, in this paper, the liquefaction potential and the dynamic pore water pressure of saturated rubber-sand mixtures with different rubber contents are investigated through the cyclic triaxial tests. The results show that the resistance to liquefaction significantly increases with the increase of rubber content in the rubber-sand mixtures. In addition, the liquefaction strength curve can be described by a power function. By taking the influence of rubber content, the normalized liquefaction strength curve of rubber-sand is obtained. The evolution models of dynamic pore pressure ratio under different test conditions are established, which are obviously influenced by the initial cyclic stress ratio and rubber content. It is observed that an evident upward migration of rubber particles occurs in the 10% rubber content mixtures when the intitial cyclic stress ratio exceeds 0.4. Based on the mesoscopic contact and movement state of particles, the migration mechanism of rubber particles is revealed.

Key words: rubber-sand mixture, cyclic triaxial test, liquefaction potential, dynamic pore pressure, particle migration