Dynamic properties of sand-bitumen mixtures as a geotechnical seismic isolation material

Geotechnical seismic isolation (GSI) has been emerged as an economical and alternative method in recent years that reduces earthquake that will affect the superstructure. Crumb rubber-granular soil mixtures (SRM) are generally used as damping geomaterial in this method. However, the major disadvantage of SRM is that the addition of rubber leads to significant reduction in stiffness of the granular soil. In this study, dynamic properties (secant shear modulus (Gsec) and damping ratio (D)) of sand and bitumen mixtures (SB) which can be used as damping materials in GSI systems were determined by cyclic triaxial tests. In addition, monotonic triaxial tests were performed to determine the pre- and post-cyclic behavior of the mixtures. In the cyclic tests, the effect of bitumen penetration and content on the energy absorption capacity of the bituminous specimens was examined depending on cyclic stress ratio (CSR), cell pressure and loading frequency. According to the findings, it was determined that higher bitumen penetration and (CSR) result in decrease of Gsec and increase of D, yet the increase in confining pressure and the increase in loading frequency have the opposite effect. For the specimens prepared with both bitumen types, it was specified that the D increased depending on the increase of bitumen content, and the highest Gsec value was observed to be bitumen content of 8%. Moreover, the findings obtained from the monotonic triaxial tests showed that after a high number of cyclic loading, the peak deviatoric stresses of the SB samples increase slightly.