Abstract:The shear characteristics of saturated soft clay in Shanghai have an important impact on the stability of building foundations. The indoor direct shear test is mainly used to determine the shear indexes of soft clay in the practical projects. The test method is a consolidated fast shear method generally, while the fast shear and slow shear test methods are rarely used with little study. Through the fast shear, consolidated fast shear and slow shear tests of typical ④-layer soft clay, the different test methods are studied to obtain the shear indexes of soft clay. The shear properties of soft clay are summarized.