Soft clay is the primary soil type encountered in engineering construction in the eastern coastal regions of China. The deformation characteristics of soft clay are closely related to its inherent stiffness. Under the action of long-term geostatic stress and external load, the dynamic behavior and characteristics of soil in vertical and horizontal directions are different, i.e., anisotropy. In this study, the dynamic parameters of saturated soft clay samples were investigated through bidirectional dynamic step-amplitude cyclic triaxial experiments. The anisotropic stiffness evolution of soft clay over a wide strain range was analyzed, and the effects of different consolidation states on the development of dynamic shear modulus and damping ratio were also examined. Under the same confining pressure, the soft clay samples subjected to axial step-amplitude cyclic loading exhibited higher ultimate dynamic stress values in backbone curves compared to those under radial step-amplitude cyclic loading, while the obtained shear modulus showed the opposite trend. The anisotropic stiffness ratio of soft clay samples tended to increase with increasing confining pressure, with an average value of 1.25 in the range of 100-300 kPa. The shear modulus of the samples increased with increasing confining pressure and consolidation stress ratio but decreased with increasing overconsolidation ratio (OCR).

The strata in urban backfill areas mostly exist in the form of loose soil-rock mixture, with high structural porosity, low strength, and poor engineering performance. They are sensitive to dynamic loads such as tunnel construction disturbance and subway train operation. The hysteretic curve can reflect the deformation, stiffness and energy dissipation of soil under dynamic load. It is of great significance to study the hysteretic curve of soil-rock mixture for the construction and operation safety of subway in backfill area. Using KTLDYN servo-controlled dynamic triaxial test system, the cyclic load test on soil-rock mixture samples in backfill area was carried out by means of cyclic loading. The effects of stone content (P), water content (omega), consolidation stress ratio (k(c)) and loading frequency (f) on the morphological characteristics (including adjacent center spacing (d), long axis slope (k), enclosing area (S) and degree of non-closure (epsilon(p))) and backbone curves of hysteretic curves are investigated. The results show that the typical hysteretic curves of soil-rock mixture are in long fusiform shape on the whole, with pointed lobes at both ends. With the increase in vibration level, d, S and epsilon(p) increase nonlinearly, while k decreases logarithmically. For the same vibration level, d and epsilon(p) decrease with the increases of P, k(c) and f, and first decrease and then increase with the increase of omega.k increases with the increases of P, k(c) and f, and increases first and then decreases with the increase of omega.S is positively correlated with P, increasing first and then decreasing with the increase of omega, and decreasing with the increases of k(c) and f. The dynamic stress and slope of backbone curve increase with the increases of P, k(c) and f when the dynamic stress variation is the same, and they first increase and then decrease with the increase of omega.

The loading intermittence duo to the time interval between adjacent passing trains is conducive to improving the dynamic stability of railway subgrade, but this intermittence effect is always ignored in existing experimental studies on the dynamic characteristics of subgrade fillers in which a continuous cyclic loading method was adopted to simulate the long-term train-induced loading on subgrade. This paper aims to study the backbone curves of subgrade silty filler under intermittent train-induced loading, considering the time interval between adjacent passing trains. By conducting a series of intermittent cyclic triaxial tests on silty filler, the backbone curves of each loading stage were constructed, and the effects of loading intermittence on the backbone curves were elaborated. The experiment results indicate that the loading intermittence enhances the resistance of subgrade silty filler to the dynamic loading and is conducive to the upward deviation of the backbone curves. The loading intermittence could effectively increase the ultimate value of dynamic stress amplitude that the silty filler could bear under cyclic loading, but has little effect on the maximum/initial resilient modulus. The backbone curves increase approximately linear under the states of plastic shakedown and plastic creep, but show significant nonlinearity after including the incremental collapse samples. Hyperbolic models for backbone curves such as H-D model and its improvement model could be adopted to characterize the backbone curves of silty filler under intermittent loading, and the normalization of H-D model was also discussed to integrate the influencing factors (i.e., moisture content and confining pressure) of the backbone curves.