Shrinkage limit of soil mixtures

Abstract

Shrinkage limit, one of the Atterberg limits, is widely linked with many plasticity-based soil behaviors. However, in a great majority of these cases, such correlations have been found to exhibit poor performance. Recently, it has been brought out that the shrinkage limit of a natural soil does not depend upon plasticity characteristics, and it is primarily governed by the relative grain size distribution of the soil. The present study confirms this mechanism with the results obtained using clay-clay, clay-non-cohesive soil, and non-cohesive soil mix systems. The present study gains importance from the point of view of criteria with respect to the design of back fill materials to be used in various applications, such as nuclear waste disposal projects.