Geotechnical Engineering

Volume 167 Issue GE5

Briefing: Effective-stress strength of peat in
triaxial compression
OKelly and Orr

Proceedings of the Institution of Civil Engineers

Geotechnical Engineering 167 October 2014 Issue GE5
Pages 417420 http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/geng.13.00143
Paper 1300143
Received 25/10/2013
Accepted 31/01/2014
Published online 22/04/2014
Keywords: engineering mechanics/strength and testing of materials/stress
analysis
ICE Publishing: All rights reserved

Briefing: Effective-stress strength

of peat in triaxial compression
1
j
Brendan C. OKelly PhD, CEng, CEnv, FTCD, MICE

Associate Professor, Department of Civil, Structural and

Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

1
j

2
j
Trevor L. L. Orr PhD, CEng, FIEI, MICE

Associate Professor, Department of Civil, Structural and

Environmental Engineering, Trinity College Dublin, Dublin, Ireland

2
j

This briefing highlights the difficulties of standard triaxial compression testing of fibrous peat and representing its
behaviour in a MohrCoulomb framework. Experimental values of effective angle of shearing resistance 9 and
apparent cohesion c9 reported in the literature for fibrous peat are scrutinised, from which the authors conclude that
high 9 values determined from triaxial compression testing can be grossly unconservative. Furthermore, given that
shearing in a peat which is not completely humified involves tearing of entangled fibres and cellular connections in
addition to shearing at frictional contacts, the authors postulate that the apparent cohesion value of fibrous peat is
most likely greater than zero. Hence fundamental research on peat strength and how it is derived needs to be
performed; also there needs to be further development of existing and new specific material models to simulate
more accurately the soft and viscous nature of peat, and the general cross-anisotropic fabric and reinforcement
provided by fibres in peats with low humification.

1.

Introduction

Peat is a difficult and unconventional geomaterial formed by the

gradual accumulation of the remains of dead plant vegetation
under waterlogged conditions. Because of its high water content
and (fibrous) organic solids, peat exhibits mechanical properties
somewhat different from the customary behaviour of inorganic
clays. In particular, at low humification, the peat fibres have
relatively high tensile stiffness and strength and their presence in
peats is not consistent in several ways with widely held concepts
for the behaviour of mineral soil since they: (a) can provide
effective stress where there is none according to Edil and Wang
(2000); (b) introduce some anisotropy and internal (tensile)
reinforcement, thereby producing greater stiffness and strength
anisotropy and reduced K0 values compared to those found in
clays; and (c) often enable shear resistance in triaxial compression to continue to develop at large axial strains without the
development of peak strength behaviour (OKelly and Zhang,
2013).
The fibrous nature of peat and its high water content, which make
it very difficult to sample and extremely compressible when
loaded, have challenged the geotechnical profession in seeking to
determine its strength parameters from in situ tests or, in particular,
from tests on specimens in the laboratory. An analogy of the effects
of fibre tensioning in laboratory test specimens of fibrous peat is
the tensile reinforcement provided by, for example, geosynthetics

used in embankment construction over soft ground, which have the

effect of reducing the shear stress/strain magnitudes and plastic
deformations occurring in the underlying soft ground.
A review of the constitutive models that have been developed/
applied to model the complex behaviour of peat is presented by
Zhang and OKelly (2013). The state of the art includes employing specialised creep models that combine (modified) Cam-Clay
with the isotache description of soil compressibility in simulating
the soft and viscous nature of the peat; for example, using the
soft soil creep model (Vermeer and Neher, 1999; den Haan and
Feddema, 2013) implemented in the Plaxis finite-element code, a
similar model included in the Imperial College finite-element
program (Bodas Freitas, 2008) or another developed by Karunawardena (2007). Some limitations of these models, including not
explicitly accounting for (a) volume changes and pore pressures
set up by rotation of the stress tensor, (b) anisotropy of creep
rates and (c) overconsolidation effects, are discussed by den Haan
and Feddema (2013). Anisotropic models (in the sense that the
yield ellipse can re-orientate with respect to the isotropic stress
axis) have recently been adapted to account for soil viscosity, as
well as the specific behaviour of peat (Leoni et al., 2010).
In Europe and elsewhere, the use of effective-stress stability
analyses is common and the MohrCoulomb approach is often
the default for industry. In this regard, the apparent cohesion (c9)
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Volume 167 Issue GE5

and effective angle of shearing resistance (9) values for peat are
typically determined in consolidated undrained (CU) triaxial
compression tests, with measurement of the pore-water pressure
response, and (or) in direct shear (i.e. shear box), ring shear or
direct simple shear tests.

2.

For CU triaxial compression, the deduced high 9 values are

often explained in terms of the failure plane intersecting the
generally horizontal plane of fibres (OKelly, 2006a; Yamaguchi
et al., 1985), thereby mobilising fibre pull-out resistance (Landva
and La Rochelle, 1983). It is well documented that this occurs in
combination with the value of effective minor principal stress
acting on the test specimen reducing, and in some instances
reaching approximately zero for a . 510% (Boulanger et al.,
1998; Farrell and Hebib, 1998; Yamaguchi et al., 1985), with the
peak strength mobilised for a .. 1520%. For a set of three or
more test specimens consolidated under different effective confining pressures, a 9 908 can be determined when the values of
pore-water pressure induced during shear increase to equal the
applied cell pressures (Landva and La Rochelle, 1983). However,
this 9 value implies no horizontal effective stress and hence
drained unconfined vertical compression, rather than shearing.
Therefore, it is concluded that in reality such high 9 values (i.e.
angles of repose of up to 908) cannot be mobilised for peat at the
larger scale in the field. This is true for all frictional materials
because the resistance provided by particle interlock and friction
depend on sufficient normal stress.
Compared with CU triaxial compression testing of small specimens of peat in the laboratory, the impossibility of 9 908
occurring in the field can be demonstrated by considering a solid
block resting on a horizontal surface, with the supporting surface
possessing a certain amount of roughness (Figure 1(a)). Initially,
consider the block to be in static equilibrium against horizontal
sliding under its self-weight W and a small applied horizontal
force P, with the resultant resisting force R from the supporting
surface acting on the block at an angle to the normal force N.
If the horizontal force P is kept constant, then the 9  908
condition involving shear failure along a very steeply inclined
shear plane (instead of the block sliding on the horizontal

F
R

Triaxial compression

Extensive documented evidence from CU triaxial compression

testing of peats indicates surprisingly high 9 values of typically
40608 (Edil and Wang, 2000), although even higher values (e.g.
9 648 (Edil and Wang, 2000), 66.58 (Kanmuri et al., 1998) and
most recently even 838 (den Haan and Feddema, 2013) have been
reported for some fibrous peats. For fibrous peats in consolidated
drained (CD) triaxial compression, shearing in the conventional
sense usually does not occur, with the test specimens essentially
undergoing one-dimensional compression (typically exhibiting
very low drained Poissons ratio values of 0.020.03 (undisturbed) and 0.040.05 (remoulded)), even for axial strain
a . 30%, in which case deduced 9 values are strongly strainlevel dependent (OKelly and Zhang, 2013).

418

Briefing: Effective-stress strength of peat

in triaxial compression
OKelly and Orr

(a)

N W + W

(b)

Figure 1. Impossibility of sliding failure for 9 908 condition.

(a) Static equilibrium under small horizontal force P, with forces
N W and F P. (b) Large increase in applied vertical force W,
with horizontal force maintained constant

surface) corresponds to  08, which can only be approached by

applying a large downward vertical force W on top of the block
(Figure 1(b)). In this scenario, the resistance against sliding
increases in proportion to the increasing vertical force until the
compressive strength of the block is reached. This condition
essentially represents unconfined compression.
It is also not clear how much of the high 9 value is due to high
pore-water pressures induced during the compression tests, which
give lower effective normal stresses than those anticipated in a
field situation. Specimen scale effects are also likely to be an
issue (i.e. the applicability of laboratory-derived 9 values to field
conditions), particularly the significance of fibre tensioning
effects in relation to the nominal dimensions and (or) aspect ratio
of the test specimens.
Very high 9 values measured in triaxial compression also pose
problems in stability calculations (e.g. for Bishop slip-circle
analysis used in determining the stability of slopes, unrealistically

Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 167 Issue GE5

Briefing: Effective-stress strength of peat

in triaxial compression
OKelly and Orr

high factors of safety are deduced) and the question arises as to

how much of these high measured 9 values, if used in an
effective-stress stability analysis, can be counted on to operate in
the field. The unconservative nature of these high 9 values is
recognised in practice. For instance, den Haan and Feddema
(2013) reported that empirical methods are used to obtain
acceptable, reduced 9 values from triaxial testing for use in
stability analyses.

the force resisting sliding largely depends on the tensile resistance of the peat fibres, which is modelled by the apparent
cohesion c9, if this is present (Farrell, 2012), rather than on
friction. Hence the authors question whether c9 0 is a realistic
value for normally consolidated fibrous peats, especially for the
very low effective stress values typically encountered in the case
of these deposits.

4.
3.

Apparent cohesion

A more fundamental consideration is whether c9 and 9 are

appropriate for peats and other (fibrous) organic soils including,
for example, paper-mill sludge (Moo-Young and Zimmie, 1996)
and sewage sludge/biosolids (OKelly, 2006b). Some researchers
report that the behaviour of normally consolidated fibrous peat as
sampled is exclusively frictional (i.e. c9 0), whereas others
report that such peat is essentially frictional, with relatively small
apparent cohesion values of 06 kPa. In the case of fibrous peat,
strength is predominantly derived from the connectivity between
elementary structures (Landva et al., 1986); that is, shearing
mostly involves tearing of entangled peat fibres and cellular
connections (see Figure 2), unlike shearing on frictional contacts
alone that occurs for uncemented mineral soils. In other words, it
appears that the apparent cohesion present is being modelled as
an increase in 9 value. Furthermore, in the case of waterlogged
peat slopes, with typical bulk unit weights of 9.511.5 kN/m3 ,
the in situ effective stress can be very small or negligible. Hence

SEM HV: 2000 kV

SEM mag: 193
Date(m/d/y): 08/31/11

Summary

There are major difficulties with interpreting triaxial strength data

for fibrous peats, leading the authors to conclude, as reported
previously by Landva et al. (1986) and OKelly and Zhang
(2013), that neither CU nor CD standard triaxial compression
testing is particularly useful in determining the effective-stress
strength parameter values for these materials. Among the standard and routinely used strength apparatuses, direct simple shear
testing (in which the direction of specimen shearing occurs along
the predominantly horizontal-orientated fibres in undisturbed
peat) produces lower and conservative 9 values of typically 30
358 for analysis and design involving fibrous peats. Detailed
studies are warranted to investigate effective-stress peat strength
and how it is derived. This is likely to require a full spectrum of
testing (ideally performed at the materials natural water content
and appropriate levels of effective stress), including element tests
and physical modelling at different scales, specialist laboratory
tests and instrumented field trials. It is recommended that more
advanced concepts that have been developed to model the

WD: 246420 mm
500 m
Det: BE detector
CMA

MIRA\TESCAN
Digital Microsocopy Imaging

Figure 2. Peat fibres in moderately humified Irish Sphagnum peat

(Zhang and OKelly, 2014)

419

Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 167 Issue GE5

Briefing: Effective-stress strength of peat

in triaxial compression
OKelly and Orr

complex behaviour of peat be explored further and employed in

practice.

OKelly BC (2006a) Compression and consolidation anisotropy of

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