GROUP NO.

4 DATE: 11/00/2023

NAME: SCORE:

COURSE YR. & SECTION: BSCE

EXPERIMENT NO. 1

ATTERBERGE LIMITS:

Liquid Limit and Plastic Limit of Soils

Objective:

To be able to define the Atterberg Limits for a given fine-grained soil sample liquid limit and plastic

limit.

To calculate the plasticity index of the soil sample based on the liquid limit and plastic limit obtained.

To classify the soil according to the analysis and interpretation of the data and results of these experiment.

To correlate these Atterberg Limits with certain engineering behaviors of soil.

For the students to appreciate the materials utilized in the real structures and provide knowledge on how

soils are used and tested.

Materials/Equipment used: Flat Graving Tool, Liquid Limit Device Cup, Mixing and Storage

Container, Spatula and Mixing Tools, Ground Glass Plate, Metal Rod, Digital Balance, Drying Oven, Sieve,

Soil Sample, Water

Procedure:

For Liquid Limit

1. Obtain a soil sample that passes through No. 40 sieve. Mix the soil with enough water until it reaches a

creamy peanut butter consistency

2. Using spatula put a portion of the mixture into the cup of liquid limit device with a depth of 10mm

3. Form a groove into the soil by drawing the tool

4. Lift and drop the cup by turning the crank (approx.2 drops/sec) until the two halves of the soil pat come

in contact at a distance of 13 mm (1/2 in)

5. Repeat the first four steps, blows for each trial should be in ranges 15-25,20-30 and 25-35

6. Obtain a sample from the soil pat. Measure its weight before oven dry for at least 24hours

For Plastic Limit

1. Obtain 20g of soil from the mixture prepared. Reduce soil to a consistency at which it can be rolled

without sticking to hands.

 2. From this specimen, select a 1.5to 2.0g portion and form this into a ball.

3. Roll the specimen until it reaches the diameter almost equal to the diameter of the metal rod.

4. Repeat the rolling and kneading of the sample until the thread crumbles and the soil can no longer be

rolled into a3.2 mm thread.

5. Go through steps 1 to 6until you have obtained two 6g of samples and water content values.

6. Measure the weight of the pre and post oven-dried (24hours) soil sample

Data/ Calculation:

Table 1. Data for Liquid Limit

Test Number 1 2 3 4
No. of Blows
Weight of Wet Soil
and Container
Weight of Dry Soil
and Container
Weight of Container

Table 2. Data for Liquid Limit

Test Number 1 2 3 4
No. of Blows
Weight of Wet Soil
and Container
Weight of Dry Soil
and Container
Weight of Container

Table 2. Data for Natural Water Content

Test Number 1 2 3 4
No. of Blows
Weight of Wet Soil
and Container
Weight of Dry Soil
and Container
Weight of Container
 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSIONS

Soils can be classified according to its soil consistency. It is significant in predictingsoil

performance when used as raw material in construction. With the use of a classificationsystem, we can
classify the soil to its specific type of clay or silt by using its Atterberg Limits

liquid limit, plastic limit and plasticity index. The state or consistency of fine-grained
soils(must be smaller or equal to 4.25 mm) can be described using these parameters. A gradualincrease
of the water content may transform a dry soil from a solid state to a semi-solid state,to a plastic state,
and after further moisture increase, into a liquid state.

For both liquid limit and plastic limit test, samples were oven dried for at least 24 ± 4hours.
Masses of these specimens were obtained before and after the process of oven drying.With these data,
the researcher can now proceed to the calculation of masses and watercontents of the soil samples.For
the liquid limit test, a linear trend line was obtained from the number of blowsversus water content
plot of the soil. The equation of the trend line is now used to determinethe liquid limit of the soil by
computing the moisture content at which it takes 25 drops to

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cause the two halves of the soil pat come in contact. The calculated Liquid Limit of the
soilsample is 53.67 approximately.For determining the plastic limit, it is considered to be on its plastic
behavior if it can be rolled to a firm thread like form with an estimated diameter of 3.2 mm. The
rolling andkneading of the soil sample is done manually without the help of any mechanical
rollingdevice. However, due to the difficulty of achieving the standard diameter thread, the sampleis
considered to pass the required procedure even though it is not thin enough. This is becausethe soil
specimen can no longer be rolled properly and crumbles easily into pieces eventhough it does not
achieve the required diameter yet.

For the calculation of the plastic limit, the average of the water contents of the threetrials in
Table 2 was obtained. The experiment shows a Plastic Limit value of 27.76. Todetermine the validity of
the computed plastic limit based from the ASTM standards, it is arequirement that the difference
between the moisture contents of the test specimens for everytrial made should not exceed 1.4%. Some
of the computed absolute differences of the watercontent largely exceed this parameter. Therefore,
assuming the obtained plastic limit for thissample is exact, the value might not be valid.In addition,if
the plastic limit is equal to or greater than the liquid limit, the soil isnon-plastic (NP). In this
experiment, since the computed value of the plastic limit is smallerthan the liquid limit (PL < LL), we
can infer that the soil sample is apparently plastic.For further evaluation of the soil sample, plasticity
index must also be determined.Soils with high plasticity index are classified to be clay while soils with
lower plasticity indexare silt. Plasticity index is then calculated from the difference of the computed
values of the plastic limit and liquid limit. To evaluate the plasticity index, the following table shows
thedescription of soil on different range of plasticity index:

CONCLUSIONS

Soil characteristics should be determined to be able to correlate with the otherengineering

behavior. Fine-grained soils are tested to determine its liquid and plastic limits,which are moisture
contents that define boundaries between material consistencystates. These standardized tests produce
comparable numbers used for soil identification,classification and correlations to strength. In this
experiment, it presents that the test soilsample exhibits high plasticity and with that a large range of
moisture over which the soilremains plastic