Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Atterberg Limits - Set 1
Atterberg Limits - Set 1
Objective:
¾ To measure the liquid and plastic limits for a soil sample.
General discussion:
Atterberg limits:
The liquid, plastic and shrinkage limits are applied only to fine grained
soils in which the water content affects the physical properties, changing
a clay soil from solid to liquid or slurry.
There are two more Atterberg limits which are not used in the civil
engineering field;
• The Cohesion limit:
water content at which soil crumbs just stick together.
This paper reports methods used for measuring the liquid and the plastic
limits.
The liquid and plastic limits of a soil are determined on the soil fraction
passing the #40 sieve. In order to obtain this soil fraction, one must use
one of the two methods:
• Washing the soil through #40 sieve, collect the passing, and
use it for testing.
• Air dry the soil, pulverize it and then sieve it through the #40
sieve.
After obtaining the soil, it is mixed with distilled water till it becomes
homogenous and left at least for 4 hours.
The Civil Engineering Center 1Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
The Civil Engineering Center 2Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
The second type is the wedge grooving tool shown in Figure 3, and it is
required by AASHTO and may be preferred in cases where the sample is
difficult to groove without tearing the soil pat.
The Civil Engineering Center 3Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
This limit is defined arbitrarily as the water content at which soil thread
just crumbles when it is rolled to a diameter of 3mm.
This method is based on the fact that water evaporates continuously
during threading the soil, hence the water content is reduced till the soil is
out of the plastic region and breaks at the solid region. A wire of 3mm in
diameter is used as a comparison to the clay thread.
Sample identification:
¾ Brown clay sample, homogenous, passing from sieve #40.
Equipments:
• Liquid Limit device (Figure 4)
a mechanical device consisting of a brass cup suspended
from a carriage designed to control its drop onto a hard
rubber base. The design of the device may vary provided that
the essential functions are preserved. The device may be
operated either by a hand crank or by an electric motor.
The Civil Engineering Center 4Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
• Grooving tools.
• Empty cans.
• Weighing device
Procedures:
The Civil Engineering Center 5Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
5. The sample is placed then into the oven and dried for
24 hours, and its weight was recorded.
The Civil Engineering Center 6Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
Calculations:
The Civil Engineering Center 7Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!
A H M 531 Atterberg limits By: Ahmed Essam Mansour
Sources of error:
1. Natural tendency of operator to reduce the rate as the groove
begins to close causing an increase in the number of blows.
The test could have been improved by using the counter attached to
casagrande device to count the number of blows, beside that the use of
automated rotating device could have reduce the error resulted from
decreasing the rate of rotation
The Civil Engineering Center 8Visit www.AHM531.com for more lab reports and lecture notes!