Analysis of the ‘Biarez–Favre’ and ‘Burland’ models for the compressibility of remoulded clays

This study aims at comparing the prediction by the Biarez and Favre model as well as by the more recent Burland one, established for reconstituted normally consolidated clays submitted to oedometric loading. The former, proposed in the 1970s, uses the liquidity index IL, and while the latter introduces a parameter, Iv, which is a normalised void index based on two characteristic void ratios ( e 100 *   and   e 1000 * ) corresponding to the oedometric curve of σ ′ v = 100   kPa and σ ′ v = 1000   kPa . The aim of these models is to predict the compressibility parameters based on the identification of parameters represented by the Atterberg limits (wL, wP, Ip) as well as of other physical parameters such as the void ratio e or the natural water content wnat, taking into account the effective overburden pressure σ ′ v . These models, which represent the intrinsic properties of clays under compression, are compared with two experimental curves, the first one representing remoulded and reconstituted clay, and the other one a deepwater clay sediment taken from the Gulf of Guinea at a depth of 700 m.