Pressure-controlled cavity expansion in clay

Experimental studies and numerical simulation of experiments were conducted on pressure-controlled cavity expansion in clay. The modified Cam-clay model was used to describe the clay behaviour. The experimental data are in good agreement with the simulation results, indicating that the adopted numerical simulation procedure is a plausible and reliable technique to study the fundamental behaviour of pressure-controlled cavity expansion. A new parameter, cavity aspect ratio (CAR), was defined to better describe the cavity shape. Different phenomena during the cavity expansion process are thus studied numerically, and the results are presented in this paper.