Towards an Advanced New Emerging Method of Determination of Mohr–Coulomb Parameters of Soils from at the Oedometric Test: Case Study-Lateritic Soils of Cameroon

Abstract

In this paper, we present a newly emerging approach for the use of the oedometer test for the determination of some important mechanical properties of an elastic-plastic soil using the Mohr–Coulomb yield criterion and an associated flow rule. Analysis of the oedometer test is performed in low strains. The identification of constitutive parameters is carried out by means of the Newton optimization procedure used to solve inverse problems. The consolidation test problem is solved using new equations proposed in this paper. The solution of the problem according to the equations developed in this paper was validated by the numerical modeling of an oedometric test by following the requirements and the experimental protocol from the Plaxis Finite Element code. The method has been validated through Plaxis’ software, making it reliable. The sensitivity study of the model with respect to its parameters was carried out. Laboratory results analysis over nine samples of the southern Cameroon soils are compared to those computed analytically. The major parameters are Young’s modulus, Poisson’s ratio, the internal friction angle, the cohesion, and the dilatancy angle. The mechanical properties of those soils obtained from the proposed model are very close to, or almost identical in some cases with values obtained in the laboratory. The practical validation and the application of our method have been successfully applied on the lateritic soils of Cameroon. The compressibility curves reconstituted from the proposed theoretical solution are superimposed on those resulting from laboratory tests with low dispersions.