Experimental Study on the Influence of Adding Rubber Powder on Strength Characteristics of Remoulded Loess

The backfill loess of a construction site in Sanmenxia, Henan Province was remoulded by adding a certain proportion of rubber powder in the remoulding process. Through a series of static triaxial consolidated undrained (CU) shear tests on saturated remoulded loess samples containing rubber powder, the stress-strain relationship, shear strength line and strength parameters were obtained. Through the experimental results, it is found that the strength of remoulded loess can be improved by adding rubber powder under larger confining pressure, and the strength improvement is not obvious under smaller confining pressure. However, the strength parameters change obviously with the amount of rubber powder, the cohesion decreases with the amount of rubber powder, and the internal friction angle increases linearly with the amount of rubber powder. In addition, it is found that the shear rate of CU test has a certain influence on the strength parameters. With the increase of shear rate, the cohesion first increases and then decreases. The internal friction angle decreases gradually. Compared with the sample mixed with rubber powder, the strength parameters of the sample without rubber powder are more sensitive to the shear rate, that is, the addition of rubber powder also reduces the sensitivity of loess shear strength to the shear rate.