Swell–consolidation characteristics of artificial sand clay mixes

Abstract

Many remedial measures have been devised to lessen the damage caused by expansive soils. Physical alteration, chemical stabilization, innovative foundation techniques like belled piers, drilled piers, under-reamed piles and granular pile anchors are some of these remedial measures. Mixing a non swelling material such as gravel or sand to expansive soil is one of the methods of physical alteration. This paper presents experimental data on artificially prepared sand-clay mixes. Swell and consolidation characteristics of these artificially prepared sand-clay mixes were studied in one dimensional consolidometer. Fine sand content and fines content in the expansive soil were arbitrarily varied in the investigation. The fines content was varied as 425–300 μm and 150–75 μm, separated from the same expansive soil based on the grain size. Swell potential and swelling pressure decreased with increasing fine sand content but increased with increasing fines content. Coefficient of compressibility, coefficient of volume compressibility and compression index of the samples decreased initially up to a sand content of 15% and thereafter increased at higher sand contents.

Keywords:

• expansive soils
• swell potential
• swelling pressure
• sand content
• fines content