Discussion on “Effects of different drying rates on shrinkage characteristics of a residual soil and soil mixtures” by Henry Krisdani, Harianto Rahardjo, Eng-Choon Leong [Engineering Geology 102 (2008) 31–37]
✍ Scribed by Mamert Mbonimpa; Michel Aubertin; Bruno Bussière
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2009
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 98 KB
- Volume
- 107
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0013-7952
No coin nor oath required. For personal study only.
✦ Synopsis
Shrinkage induced by suction is one of the key characteristics that need to be assessed for the analysis and design of various engineered geotechnical systems made of fine-grained materials, such as layered soil covers and paste tailings disposal facilities. Obtaining representative experimental results on such deformable materials can be quite a challenge (e.g., Fredlund and Rahardjo, 1993;Jucá and Frydman, 1996;Delage, 2004). The authors present in their paper an interesting experimental set-up to evaluate the shrinkage characteristics of unsaturated soils. The set-up was used to test a residual soil and two mixtures of the residual soil with fine sand. The authors describe a procedure that makes use of the soil water characteristic curve (SWCC), obtained with the Tempe pressure cell and the Pressure plate apparatus, for the interpretation of the experimental shrinkage data. The shrinkage limit is also determined from shrinkage curves obtained from initially unsaturated specimens. The approaches presented in the paper raise some questions regarding the assumptions behind the data analysis. These questions are expressed in the following.