Granular Materials in Civil Engineering: Recent Advances in the Physics of Their Mechanical Behavior and Applications to Engineering Works - Multiscale Geomechanics: From Soil to Engineering Projects - page 63

− realization of a series of shear tests (triaxial or others) on the homothetically-
reduced samples with the same density in order to obtain their shear strength
envelope;
− application of the scale effect rule with Weibull parameter m , measured from
the crushing tests to assess the rockfill shear strength envelope from the envelope
measured on the “reduced” gravel material.
Figure 3.13. New method for rockfill shear strength assessment
Cautiously limited to a reduction factor of D 1 /D 2 = 15 here, this method is
summarized in Figure 3.13. It allows us to predict the shear strength envelope of
coarse materials with grain sizes of up to D Ma x = 600 mm, which can be considered
representative of most practical situations, from triaxial test results on gravels with
maximum grain sizes up to D Ma x = 40mm, which can be tested in 250 mm triaxial
cells.