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Soil Properties and Soil Mechanics
Soil Properties and Soil Mechanics
Soil Properties
Definition
Soil in broad terms for foundation engineering is the ground supporting a structure. Soil is
considered to be any loose sedimentary deposit, such as gravel, sand, silt, clay or a mixture of these
materials.
Cohesive soils have shear strength. It is possible to make a vertical cut in silts and clays and it
remain standing, unsupported, for some time. This cannot be done in dry sand. In clay and
silts, therefore, some other factor must contribute to shear strength. This factor is called
cohesion. It results from the mutual attraction, which exist between fine particles and tends to
hold them together in a solid mass without the application of external forces.
Clay consist of very fine microscopic particles which hold water to increase their volume, and
release moisture to decrease their volume.
Special precaution needs to be taken in the design of footings to resist or avoid the forces
caused by shrinking and swelling.
Soil consists of a mass of solids particles separated by spaces or voids. The voids of a soil are usually
a mixture of air and water (soil is partially saturated). In certain circumstances the voids may be
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completely filled with water or air only. If only air is present the soil is dry and if only water is
present the soil saturated. The Figure1 shows a cross-section through a granular soil.
(a)
(b)
Figure 1 Cross-section through granular soil
In order to study the properties we will adopt the idealised form of the diagram shown in Figure 1.
The soil mass has a total volume V, containing a volume of solid particles Vs and a volume of voids
Vv. In most cases the void volume exists of a mixture of water (Vw) and air (Va).
The designation for the weight is W and the weight of water is Ww and the weight of air is zero as
shown on the right side in Figure 1 (b).
Figure 2 shows the three cases in diagrammatic form
(a) soil & air
(b) soil with water and
(c) soil with water & air
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Figure
2 Water and air contents in a soil
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When both air and water are present the soil is said to be partially saturated. The degree of saturation
is simply
Air-void ratio
Also
The ratio of the volume of air to the total volume of soil multiplied by 100 is known as the
percentage air voids.
The more common way is to use the amount of mass instead of the amount of weight. Using the
weight necessitates in a conversion as shown below:
The specific gravity of a material is the ratio of the weight or the mass of a volume of the material to
the weight or mass of an equal volume of water.
Bulk density( )
Dry density( d)
For ease of calculating we will assume that all solids are compressed together and their volume
considered equal to a unit volume as shown in Figure 1 and Figure 2.
Porosity (n)
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is simply
The ratio of the volume of air to the total volume of soil is known as the percentage air voids.
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