Water retention properties of stiff silt

Authors

  • Barbara Likar
  • Vikica Kuk
  • Karmen Fifer Bizjak

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.5474/geologija.2017.003

Abstract

Recent research into the behaviour of soils has shown that it is in fact much more complex than can be described by the mechanics of saturated soils. Nowadays the trend of investigations has shifted towards the unsaturated state. Despite the significant progress that has been made so far, there are still a lot of unanswered questions related to the behaviour of unsaturated soils. For this reason, in the field of geotechnics some new concepts are developed, which include the study of soil suction. Most research into soil suction has involved clayey and silty material, whereas up until recently no data have been available about measurements in very stiff preconsolidated sandy silt. Very stiff preconsolidated sandy silt is typical of the Krško Basin, where it is planned that some very important geotechnical structures will be built, so that knowledge about the behaviour of such soils at increased or decreased water content is essential. Several different methods can be used for soil suction measurements. In the paper the results of measurements carried out on very stiff preconsolidated sandy silt in a Bishop - Wesley double-walled triaxial cell are presented and compared with the results of soil suction measurements performed by means of a potentiometer (WP4C). All the measurement results were evaluated taking into account already known results given in the literature, using the three most commonly used mathematical models. Until now a lot of papers dealing with suction measurements in normal Consolidated and preconsolidated clay have been published. Measurements on very stiff preconsolidated sandy silt, as presented in this paper were not supported before.

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How to Cite

Likar, B., Kuk, V., & Fifer Bizjak, K. (2017). Water retention properties of stiff silt . Geologija, 60(1), 37–47. https://doi.org/10.5474/geologija.2017.003

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