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Study on shear strength and swelling-shrinkage characteristic of compacted

expansive soil

Conference Paper · May 2000

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Study on shear strength and swelling-shrinkage characteristic of
compacted expansive soil
Ling-wei Kong & Luo-rong Tan
LRSM Laboratory, Institute of Rock & Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071 China

ABSTRACT: The shear strength and swelling-shrinkage characteristic of a typical expansive soil from Yi-
chang, Hubei province, China is systematically investigated. The correlation between the shear strength pa-
rameters, swelling pressure, expansion ratio under various loading pressures, shrinkage degree, shrinkage in-
dex and initial water content of unsaturated compacted expansive soil is established. The mechanism of some
of the above mentioned parameters existing critical point is analyzed.

1 INTRODUCTION
Table 1 Basic property parameters of the expansive soil
Expansive soil is a very important type of regional
soil. Expansive soil problems exist in most countries Property Value Remark
in the world, which causes serious hazards. Many
researchers have studied the behavior of expansive Specific gravity 2.77
soil. Indeed, the strength and swelling-shrinkage Liquid limit 81.7 (%)
properties of expansive soil are more complex than Plastic limit 34.7(%)
ordinary clay soil, which results in significantly spe- Plasticity index 47.0
cial characteristic in its deformation and strength Dry water content 11.5~14.2
(Tan 1987,1994). Up to date, it is reported that foun- Free swell 103.0(%)
dation damage and slope engineering damage due to Shrinkage ratio 12.1(%) Vertical
unsaturated expansive soil behavior does happen. 11.7(%) Horizontal
The fundamental behavior for expansive soil is not Grain size distribution 64.5(%) 10m
well understood, particularly, systemic research of 50.0(%) 5m
expansive soil properties should be progressed fur- 25.0(%) 2m
ther.
In this paper, the strength and swelling-shrinkage
properties of a typical expansive soil is systemically Table 2 Physico-mechanical parameters of natural unsaturated
investigated by using the methods of ordinary geo- intact specimens
technical testing so that its physico-mechanical
properties and damage behavior can be understood. Item Value Remark

Natural water content (%) 35.3~40.9

2 SOIL PROPERTIES AND TEST METHOD Natural density (g/cm3) 1.76~1.85
Void ratio 1.03~1.16
2.1 Properties of expansive soil
Coefficient of shrinkage 0.511 Vertical
Soil samples were collected from Yichang, Hubei 0.448 Horizontal
province, China. The soil is in shallow layer and has Swelling pressure (kPa) 13.6
high swelling properties. Table 1 and Table 2 sum- Cohesion (kPa) 35.5 Slow direct
marizes its property parameters and its physico- Internal friction angle (0 ) 11.7 shear test
mechanical parameters for natural intact specimens, Coefficient of compressibility (Mpa-1) 0.436
respectively. The corresponding compaction curve is Compression index 0.250
plotted in Fig.1. It can be seen that the soil is a typi-
cal expansive soil.
 Table 3 Relation between unsaturated shear strength pa-
1.45
rameters and initial specimen states

1.4 Water content Density Cohesion friction angle

Dry density(g/cm^3)

(%) (g/cm3) (kPa) (0 )

1.35
26.49 1.793 103.67 12.49
1.3 28.53 1.867 99.79 11.43
29.26 1.872 92.32 10.36
1.25 30.82 1.891 86.02 9.92
31.60 1.891 79.1 8.42
1.2 33.55 1.857 59.96 7.69
20 25 30 35 40 45 34.80 1.860 54.87 6.54
37.03 1.822 47.35 6.29
Water content(%)
41.24 1.771 28.38 6.19
Fig.1 The compaction curve of expansive soil

160
2.2 Test method

Shear strenght(kPa)
The compacted samples were prepared at various 120
water contents and cured before compaction in the
standard compaction device, in which standard effort
80
was selected and used. The slow direct shear test
method was adopted to measure the shear strength of
the compacted specimens, in which the water con- 40
w=41.24% w=37.03% w=34.80%
tent was maintained constant during the consolida- w=33.55% w=31.6%
tion and shearing process. The “constant volume” 0
test was used to measure the swelling pressure. The 0 100 200 300 400
expansion ratio of compacted specimen was meas- Vertical stress(kPa)
ured under loading of 50kPa .The load was main- Fig 2(a) The direct shear strength versus
tained for some time (as the specimen tended to water contant relation
swell and continue to do so) until the specimen ex- 200
hibited no further tendency to swell. Then the spe-
cimen was unloaded in a conventional manner. The
Shear strenght(kPa)

150
shrinkage test was performed in the shrinkage limit
apparatus. Besides the vertical shrinkage ratio was
100
measured, the horizontal shrinkage ratio was also w=30.82% w=29.26%
measured, in which the specimen slowly dried in air. w=28.53% w=26.49%

The specimen was covered at various time intervals, 50

as in this way, the specimen comes to equilibrium
and shrinks uniformly.
3 RESULTS OF TESTS AND ANALYSIS
3.1 The shear strength properties of compacted
expansive soil
Table 3 summarizes the results of slow direct shear
tests on 9 sets of compacted specimens with various
water contents in an unsaturated state. The corre-
sponding shear strength versus vertical stress, cohe-
sion c and friction angle  versus water content are
plotted in Fig. 2, Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, respectively.
From the above table and figures, the following
trends in shear strength for compacted expansive
soil can be observed
(1) The shear strength decreases as the initial wa-
ter content increases along the compaction curve,
whereas the effect of dry density on shear strength is
0
0 100 200 300 400
Vertical stress(kPa)
Fig.2(b) The direct shear strength versus
water content relation
not very significant.
(2) The cohesion of the unsaturated compacted
specimens reduces with the increase of water con-
tent, moreover, the trend is close to a line, which in-
dicates matric suction varies inversely with water
content.
(3) The trend of friction angle with water content
is different from that of cohesion. The former de-
creases significantly in the range of water content
less than the plastic limit, whereas as the water con-
tent is more than the plastic limit, the friction angle
tends to a constant. That is to say, the friction angle
shows a critical point at the water content close to
the plastic limit (w=35%). Furthermore, the slope of
the relationship between cohesion and water content 350
is more than that of the friction angle. It indicates
that the friction angle does not vary with initial wa- 280

Swelling pressure(kPa)
ter content greatly once the degree of saturation
reaches a certain value, which is determined by the 210
intrinsic characteristics of a soil.
140

120
70

90
0
Cohesion(kPa)

20 25 30 35 40 45
60 Water content(%)
Fig.5 The swelling pressure versus water
30 content relation

0 Table 4 Results of swelling pressure tests

10 20 30 40 50
Water content(%) Initial water content Final water content Swelling pressure
(%) (%) (kPa)
Fig.3 Cohesion versus water content relation

16 24.55 29.99 301.10

25.47 30.32 269.04
26.58 31.01 208.40
12
Friction angle( )

27.17 30.53 234.70

28.10 31.11 247.50
8 29.12 31.80 173.40
29.39 31.45 225.60
4 30.17 32.10 163.00
30.31 32.12 162.60
0
30.93 32.89 128.80
33.46 35.54 102.40
10 20 30 40 50
33.58 37.10 62.13
Water content(%) 33.97 34.96 86.40
Fig.4 The friction angle versus water content 34.16 35.69 46.00
relation 34.58 35.79 38.10
37.22 38.35 31.70
40.35 42.64 18.10
3.2 The swelling properties of compacted expansive
soil Table 5 Results of expansion ratio test under various loading
Table 4 and Table 5 summarize the results of swell-
ing pressure tests on 17 sets of compacted specimens Initial water Final water Expansion ratio under loading
and expansion ratio tests on 8 sets of compacted content content 50kPa 25kPa 12.5kPa 1.0kPa
specimens under various loading, respectively. The (%)
corresponding swelling pressure and expansion ratio
versus initial water content is shown 24.98 39.69 6.15 7.02 7.88 10.45
in Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, respectively. 25.17 36.18 4.94 6.36 7.33 10.02
From Fig. 5 and Fig. 6, it can be observed con- 28.15 38.24 4.14 5.15 6.04 9.06
cerning the swelling properties of compacted expan- 30.57 38.70 2.48 3.42 4.70 8.35
sive soil 32.00 38.57 1.70 2.57 3.65 6.81
(1) The swelling pressure decreases linearly with 32.91 38.00 1.07 1.75 2.58 5.85
initial water content increase in the range of water 34.96 38.05 0.51 1.05 1.58 2.58
content less than the plastic limit (w=35%), whereas 37.32 39.97 -0.51 –0.20 0.16 1.49
once the water content is more than 35%, the swell-
ing pressure is very small and tends to a constant (2) The expansion ratio under various pressures
value. increases with unloading for the same water content,
whereas under the same unloading pressure, the
17
expansion ratio decreases linearly with the initial
water content, except for unloading pressures up to
1.0kPa. When the unloading pressure is equal to 14

Shrinkage ratio(%)
1.0kPa, the expansion ratio versus initial water
12
11
Air-drying

9 Oven-drying

8
Expansion ratio(%)

5
3
25 30 35 40 45
Water content(%)
0
50kPa 25kPa 12.5kPa 1.0kPa Fig.7(a) Vertical shrinkage ratio versus water
-3 content
20 24 28 32 36 40 From Table 6 and Fig. 7~Fig. 9, it can be ob-
Water content(%) served concerning the shrinkage characteristic of
Fig.6 Expansion ratio versus water content compacted expansive soil:
under different loading (1) The effect of initial water content on dry water
content relation is nonlinear. content and shrinkage index for compacted speci-
mens is not noticeable.The above two parameters are
determined by the intrinsic properties of a soil.
3.3 The shrinkage properties of compacted (2) The shrinkage ratio and shrinkage degree in-
expansive soil crease linearly with initial water content, moreover,
Table 6 summarizes the results of shrinkage tests on the slope for air-drying is less than that of oven dry-
9 sets of compacted specimens. The corresponding ing.
shrinkage ratio and shrinkage degree versus water (3) For the specimens after swelling pressure
content are shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8, respectively. tests, the horizontal shrinkage ratio increases line-
For the sake of contrast, the shrinkage ratio and arly with water content in the range of water content
shrinkage degree under the oven-dried condition less than 35%, whereas when the water content is
were also measured. Its corresponding results are more than 35%, the shrinkage ratio exhibits no fur-
shown in Fig. 7 and Fig. 8. In order to reflect the ther tendency to increase.
shrinkage characteristics of specimens with high
density, the horizontal shrinkage ratio of the speci- 15
40
mens after swelling pressure tests under the oven-
dried condition was also measured, the result was
12
plotted in Fig. 9.
ratio(%)

35
degree(%)

Table 6 Results of shrinkage tests 9

Shrinkage

30 Air-drying
Initial Final Shrinkage ratio Shrinkage index Oven-drying
Shrinkage

Air-drying
water content Vertical Horizontal Vertical Horizontal 6 Oven-drying

(%) (%) 25

3
28.59 12.69 8.52 8.16 0.54 0.51
31.31 12.39 9.11 9.16 0.48 0.48 20 25 30 35 40 45
32.68 12.35 10.44 9.30 0.51 0.46 25 30 35 40 45
Water content(%)
Water content(%)
32.96 12.51 9.99 9.52 0.49 0.47
Fig.7(b) Horizontal shrinkage ratio versus
33.33 12.66 10.87 9.63 0.53 0.47 Fig.8 Shrinkage degree versus water content
water content
33.94 12.80 11.20 9.89 0.53 0.48
36.80 12.33 11.97 11.12 0.49 0.45
39.71 12.58 13.68 11.73 0.50 0.43
40.26 12.61 14.45 11.90 0.52 0.43 4 CONCLUSIONS
 11

Shrinkage ratio(%) 10

7
28 31 34 37 40
Water content(%)
Fig.9 Horizontal shrinkage ratio of oven-dried
condition versus water content for specimens
after swelling pressure tests

From laboratory tests on the shear strength and

swelling-shrinkage characteristic of compacted ex-
pansive soil, the following conclusions can be ob-
tained:
(1) When the initial water content of compacted
specimens is less than the plastic limit, the shear
strength parameters, swelling pressure, expansion
ratio, shrinkage ratio and shrinkage degree change
with water contents linearly. It indicates that a corre-
lation between these parameters exists.
(2) The friction angle, swelling pressure and
shrinkage ratio show a critical point when the water
content is close to the plastic limit. When the water
content is more than the plastic limit, the above pa-
rameters do not vary greatly with water content and
tend to a constant value. It indicates that the behav-
ior of unsaturated expansive soil is similar to that of
saturated expansive soil as the degree of saturation
reaches a certain value.

5 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The National Natural Science Foundation Commis-

sion of China Supports the Project (Grant no:
19772068)

REFERENCES

Tan Luorong.1987.The Investigation of the Basic Properties of

Expansive Soil. Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineer-
ing.9 (5): 31~42
Tan Luorong & Zhang Meiying et al.1994.Microstructure
Characteristics and Engineering Properties of Expansive
Soil. Chinese Journal of Geotechnical Engineering.16 (2):
48~58

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