An experimental study on shear mechanical properties of clay-concrete interface with different roughness of contact surface

In order to understand the shear mechanical properties of the interface between clay and structure and better serve the practical engineering projects, it is critical to conduct shear tests on the clay-structure interface. In this work, the direct shear test of clay-concrete slab with different joint roughness coefficient (JRC) of the interface and different normal stress is performed in the laboratory. Our experimental results show that (1) shear strength of the interface between clay and structure is greatly affected by the change of normal stress under the same condition of JRC and shear stress of the interface gradually increases with increasing normal stress; (2) there is a critical value JRCcr in the roughness coefficient of the interface; (3) the relationship between shear strength and normal stress can be described by the Mohr Coulomb failure criterion, and the cohesion and friction angle of the interface under different roughness conditions can be calculated accordingly. We find that there also exists a critical value JRCcr for cohesion and the cohesion of the interface increases first and then decreases as JRC increases. Moreover, the friction angle of the interface fluctuates with the change of JRC and it is always smaller than the internal friction angle of clay used in this experiment; (4) the failure type of the interface of the clay-concrete slab is type I sliding failure and does not change with varying JRC when the normal stress is small enough. When the normal stress increases to a certain extent, the failure type of the interface will gradually change from shear failure to type II sliding failure with the increment of JRC.