This paper investigates the monotonic and cyclic response of offshore carbonate sediment and silica sand using two different types of simple shear apparatus (referred to as 'rigid' boundary and 'flexible' boundary simple shear apparatus in this paper). In the 'rigid' boundary apparatus a series of concentric rings were used around the specimen to transfer the shear strain from the bottom to the top of the specimen, whilst in the 'flexible' boundary apparatus an unreinforced membrane was used to confine the specimen. All the tests were carried out on reconstituted specimens with similar initial conditions. The effects of these different boundary conditions on the monotonic and cyclic shearing response are presented in this paper. Comparisons between inferred and directly measured pore-water pressures and shear strain responses are also presented in this paper. This paper demonstrates that there are significant differences in the results obtained using the two types of simple shear apparatus. The difference is more pronounced for silica sand compared to the fine grained carbonate sediment used in this study.
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