Strain rate effects on the stress—strain behavior of sand were investigated by performing special plane strain and triaxial compression tests on saturated and air-dried sand specimens. In these tests, the loading strain rate was changed many times by a factor of up to 1 000 during otherwise monotonous loading at a constant axial strain rate. Test results show that the stress jump upon a stepwise change in the strain rate decays with an increase in the irreversible strain when monotonous loading continues at the changed strain rate and the amount of stress jump is essentially proportional to the instantaneous stress. Based on the amount of these stress jumps, a parameter β called the rate-sensitivity coefficient is introduced to represent the quantity of the observed viscous properties of sand, which equals 0.021 3 and 0.024 2 respectively for Hostun and Toyoura sands. Further analyses on the results indicate that the effect of the presence of pore water is deemed to be negligible with sand and the β value is rather independent of loading method, wet condition and confining pressure.
