Diatomites are unicellular algae fossils that can be found worldwide. This paper studies the diatom's shape effect on diatomaceous soil mixtures' dynamic and compressibility properties. Physical characteristics of six diatomite samples with variable shapes and taxonomies are presented. Among these six samples, three diatomites of similar grain size distribution were mixed with kaolin, and the mechanical properties (i.e., shear modulus and damping ratio from small to large strains) were analysed. The results showed that diatom frustules increased the mixtures' compressibility and reduced the maximum shear modulus compared with pure kaolin samples. Moreover, the diatom's shape influenced the normalised shear modulus degradation curve and the damping ratio. Overall, the presence of diatomites reduces the energy dissipation capacity in soils. This research evidenced the importance of distinguishing the shape of diatom in soil mixtures when mechanical properties are analysed, a situation that has yet to be explored.

硅藻土是单细胞藻类化石，在世界各地都有发现。本文研究了硅藻的形状对硅藻土混合物的动力和压缩特性的影响。介绍了具有不同形状和分类的六种硅藻土样品的物理特征。在这六个样品中，将三种粒度分布相似的硅藻土与高岭土混合，其机械性能（即、剪切模量和阻尼比（从小应变到大应变）进行了分析。结果表明，与纯高岭土样品相比，硅藻壳增加了混合物的压缩性并降低了最大剪切模量。此外，硅藻的形状影响归一化剪切模量退化曲线和阻尼比。总体而言，硅藻土的存在降低了土壤中的能量耗散能力。这项研究证明了在分析机械特性时区分土壤混合物中硅藻形状的重要性，这一情况仍有待探索。