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Swelling Behavior of Unsaturated Expansive Soil

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Abstract

To investigate the effect of the changes of the soil suction on volume changes, small-scale experiments were conducted for pure bentonite and bentonite mixed with sand of proportion 30%, 40%, and 50% at different initial water contents and dry unit weights that were chosen from the compaction curves. In addition, a large-scale model with soil dimensions 700 × 700 × 650 mm was used for the same initial water content and dry unit weight to show the effect of water content changes on swelling with time and soil suction. It was concluded that the swelling potential decreases from 14 to 2.4% with an increase of sand content by adding 50% sand to pure bentonites. The swelling percent found from the large-scale model is higher than that obtained from the oedometer swelling test for the same soil. This result applies well on BS5 (50:50, bentonites:sand) soil sample for which the swelling potential from the large-scale model is 8.3% and from the conventional swelling test is 3.6%. The measured swelling pressure from the swelling test at small soil samples is much higher than that measured from the large-scale model. For soil sample BS3 (60:40, bentonite:sand), the swelling pressure decreases from 50 kPa in the swelling test to 23.2 kPa in the large-scale model. The swelling potential decreases with an increase of the soil suction for all types of soil subjected to different periods of saturation.

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Data Availability

All data used in the experiments are included in this paper.

Abbreviations

A:

activity of clay

ASTM:

American Society for Testing and Materials

B1, B2, BS1, BS2, BS3, BS4, BS5, BS6:

identification symbols for soil samples

B:S:

bentonite:sand

Cc:

coefficient of curvature

CH:

high plasticity clay

SC:

sand with plastic fines

Cu:

coefficient of uniformity

e:

void ratio

Gs:

specific gravity

L.L.:

liquid limit

O.M.:

organic matter

O.M.C.:

optimum moisture content

P.I.:

plasticity index

P.L.:

plastic limit

S:

degree of saturation

SP:

poorly graded sand

Su:

undrained shear strength

SWRC:

soil-water retention curve

TSS:

total soluble salts

USCS:

Unified Soil Classification System

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Acknowledgments

The authors would like to acknowledge the Civil Engineering Department of the University of Technology in Iraq for supporting this work.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Civil Engineering Department, University of Technology, Baghdad, Iraq

    Mohammed Y. Fattah, Nahla M. Salim & Entesar J. Irshayyid

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  1. Mohammed Y. Fattah
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  2. Nahla M. Salim
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  3. Entesar J. Irshayyid
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This work was carried out by the third author under supervision of the first two authors.

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Correspondence to Mohammed Y. Fattah.

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Fattah, M.Y., Salim, N.M. & Irshayyid, E.J. Swelling Behavior of Unsaturated Expansive Soil. Transp. Infrastruct. Geotech. 8, 37–58 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40515-020-00112-z

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