Abstract
Expansive soil has been well recognised as a problematic soil due to its swelling and shrinkage behaviour during wetting and drying cycles. The swelling pressure developed upon wetting is often investigated by placing an initially unsaturated soil specimen into an oedometric cell modified to restrain the specimen’s volume change. Water is then added to the specimen and the increase in vertical stress due to wetting is then measured. In this study a K0 triaxial cell, originally designed for saturated soil testing, is modified and used to investigate the development of swelling pressure. The cell allows not only vertical but also radial stresses to be measured during the wetting process. An initially unsaturated residual soil specimen is assembled into the K0 cell where wetting of the specimen is allowed from the bottom drainage line. Allowing neither vertical nor radial strain during the wetting, vertical and radial swelling stresses developed during the process were recorded. Important experimental issues related to the tests are discussed aiming to improve the result quality.
1 INTRODUCTION
An expansive soil swells upon wetting and shrinks when subject to drying. This type of geomaterial has been well recognised as problematic. Lightly loaded structures built on expansive soils heaved when subject to wetting (Jennings & Kerrich, 1962; Fredlund & Rahardjo, 1991). Pender (1996) reported that retaining walls supporting expansive soils could tilt noticeably when subject to seasonal wetting and drying. In extreme cases, the walls could even collapse upon prolonged raining (Thomas, 2008; Ozer et al. 2012). Furthermore, deformation caused by soil swelling was identified as an important failure mechanism in expansive soil slopes (Ng et al. 2003; Qi & Vanapalli 2016). Conventionally, swelling pressure is often evaluated using oedometric cells while specimens are inundated under constant volume. It is anticipated that swelling stress measured using this approach would have been underestimated due to side friction of the oedometric ring (Al-Shamrani & Dhowian, 2003; ASTM D4546-03). This paper presents a modified triaxial cell which allows wetting of soil specimen under K0 condition. Preliminary results are presented and important experimental issues related to the testing are highlighted and discussed.
2 STUDIED SOIL
Block soil samples were retrieved from a site near Newmarket, Auckland. The orange-brown residual soil is a weathering product of sandstones belonging to the East Coast Bays Formation (Kermode 1992). Natural water content of the soil was 60±2%. Table 1 summarises index properties of the soil obtained in accordance with NZS 4402:1986. The soil contains significant amount of clay fraction, exhibits a high liquid limit, and is referred to as CH according to USCS. The soil is considered to be highly expansive based on its liquid limit, plasticity index and activity according to Chen (2012) and van der Merwe (1964). X-ray diffraction (XRD) and X-ray fluorescence (XRF) analyses were carried out to determine the mineralogy of the studied soils. The soil was found to contain 64% quartz, 21% montmorillonite, 12% goethite and 3% of oxides with various cations.
Table 1: Index properties of the studied soil
| Index | |
| Specific gravity | 2.64 |
| Silt fraction | 12% |
| Clay fraction | 88% |
| Liquid limit | 114% |
| Plastic limit | 48% |
| Shrinkage limit | 23% |
| Activity | 0.75 |
3 TEST EQUIPMENT AND SPECIMEN PREPARATION
3.1 Oedometer
Soil specimen in the oedometer cell has diameter and height of 76 mm and 19 mm respectively. The oedometer ring with specimen was carefully placed into the cell. Then, a vertical stress of 25 kPa was applied. The specimen was inundated under constant volume and the development of vertical swelling stress was recorded. It was found that the change of swelling pressure became negligible 24 hours after the inundation.
3.2 Triaxial Cell
A K0 triaxial cell (Campanella & Vaid 1972; Hettiaratchi et al., 1992; Meyer, 1997) was used to investigate the development of vertical and radial swelling pressures of an initially unsaturated triaxial specimen when subject to wetting. The specimen has dimensions of 120 mm height and 60 mm in diameter. Upper drainage line of the specimen was connected to an open-end burette tube partially filled with water maintaining at atmospheric pressure. Saturation of the specimen could be easily visualised when the out-coming fluid changed from air bubbles to yellowish water containing fines of the studied soil. The K0 triaxial cell has a rigid chamber wall. By restraining the flow of cell fluid, a K0 condition could be imposed onto the specimen. By measuring the pressure of the cell fluid, the change of radial stress of the specimen could be monitored. Vertical deformation of the specimen was not allowed and the development of vertical swelling pressure was recorded by an internal load cell.
After the specimen had been assembled into the triaxial cell, vertical and radial pressures of 25 kPa and 10 kPa respectively were applied to the specimen. A small back pressure was then applied at the bottom drainage line which aimed to wet the specimen from bottom to top. Fig. 1 shows a schematic diagram and a photo of the setup of K0 triaxial cell. Note that all the K0 triaxial wetting tests were carried out at a temperature-controlled room with temperature varying within 1 °C.
