Assessment of the effects of block count on shear strength of block in cohesive soil matrix

Strength and deformation behaviours of block in weak matrix soils exhibit differences depending on geomechanical properties of matrix, blocks and boundaries between matrix and blocks. Therefore generally some difficulties may be encountered during determination of strength and deformation parameters of these kinds of geological masses. Empirical studies have been performed to overcome these difficulties since 1990s. These empirical approaches have been proposed based on the findings in the literature from a certain degree of safe side. Empirical prediction tools in the literature are assistant tools for selection of the peak shear strength parameters. Volumetric block proportion (VBP) has been preferred as fundamental input parameter in the existing empirical approach in the literature. In this study, the use of the block count in the engineering application dimension has been evaluated, as well as the volumetric bloc proportion of blocks in the cohesive soil matrix. It can be said that significant correlations can be determined for shear strength of these geological materials as a result of evaluation of the derived block count parameters depending on the engineering application dimension .However, the correlation coefficients, which are indicative of these significant correlation levels, do not have a superiority (high) to be preferred over the volumetric block ratio. Furthermore, when compared with determining the volumetric block proportion, the derived block count parameters are not a more practical parameter to achieve. However, when data groups are combined for generalization, it is observed that the correlation coefficients were adversely affected by the use of the derived block count parameters in this study. For this reason, it can be said that VBP is an important and fundamental input parameter for an empirical criterion in determining the strength and deformation parameters as suggested in the literature.