Abstract
Most undisturbed natural soils have experienced some degree of post-depositional digenesis often leading to a cemented structure. Cemented soils display distinctly different characteristics from freshly remolded soils, including high small-strain stiffness, weakened stiffness-stress dependency, higher dilative tendency, stiffness loss after cementation breakage, proneness to strain localization, decreased liquefaction potential, and pronounced sampling effects particularly on small strain stiffness. Unsaturation often coexists with cemented soils, and in some cases the development of cementation is linked to diminishing saturation. At the microscale, the behavior exhibited by cemented soils can be analyzed in terms of simple yet robust micromechanical concepts to create a coherent physical-mechanical framework that explains deviations from the conventional understanding of soil behavior which centers on effective stress dependent stiffness. In view of cemented soils, proper site characterization must consider in situ measurements of shear wave velocity, and careful sampling techniques.