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determined as it effects the whole built structure. To achieve that soil testing is done. Soil
testing, in construction. may refer to one or more of a wide variety of soil analysis conducted
for engineering like geotechnical, geochemical and ecological investigations. Types of Soil
tests for building construction works depend on properties of soil. Design of foundation is
based on soil test report of construction site.
Soil tests for construction of buildings or any structure is the first step in construction planning
to understand the suitability of soil for proposed construction work. Soil which is responsible
for allowing the stresses coming from the structure should be well tested to give excellent
performance. If soil isn’t tested correctly then the whole building or structure is damaged or
collapsed or leaned like leaning tower of Pisa. So, soil inspection or testing is the first step to
proceed any construction.
Moisture content test tests the amount of water prevalent in soil Therefore, moisture content
is calculated on a dry basis, rather than a total mass basis, to ensure consistency. The
moisture content of soil is described as the ratio of the mass of water held in the soil to the
dry soil. The mass of water is determined by the difference before and after drying the soil.
Of all the above oven drying method is most common and accurate method. In this method
the soil sample is taken and weighed and put it in oven and dried at 110o + 5oC. After 24 hours
soil is taken out and weighed. The difference between the two weights is noted as weight of
water or moisture content in the soil.
Specific gravity of soil is the ratio of the unit weight of soil solids to that of the water. It is
determined by many methods and they are.
In this method a cylindrical core cutter of standard dimensions is used to cut the soil in the
ground and lift the cutter up with soil sample. The taken-out sample is weighed and noted.
Finally, water content for that sample is determined and dry density is calculated from the
below relation.
Sand Replacement Method for Soil Dry Density Testing
In this method also, a hole is created in the ground by excavating soil whose dry density is to
be find. The hole is filled with uniform sand of known dry density. So by dividing the mass of
sand poured into the hole with dry density of sand gives the volume of hole. So we can
calculate the soil dry density from above formula.
In this test, Casagrande’s liquid limit device is used which consist a cup with moving up and
down mechanism. The cup is filled with soil sample and groove is created in the middle of
cup with proper tool. When the cup is moved up and
down with the help of handle the groove becomes
closed at some point.
Take the soil sample and add some water to make it plastic enough to shape into small ball.
Leave it for some time and after that put that ball in the glass plate and rolled it into threads
of 3mm diameter.
If the threads do not break when we roll it to below 3mm diameter, then water content is
more than the plastic limit. In that case reduce water content and repeat the same
procedure until crumbling occurs at 3mm diameter. Finally find out the water content of
resultant soil which value is nothing but plastic limit.
In case of shrinkage limit, the water content in the soil is just sufficient to fill the voids of
soil. That is degree of saturation is of 100%. So, there is no change in volume of soil if we
reduce the shrinkage limit. It is determined by the below formula for the given soil sample.
Pw = density of water.
Proctor’s Compaction Test on Soil
Add water to it and leave it in air tight container for 20hrs. Mix the
soil and divide it into 6 – 8 parts. Position the mold and pour one
part of soil into the mold as 3layers with 25 blows of ramming for
each layer.
Remove the base plate and Weight the soil along with mold. Remove the soil from mold and
take the small portion of soil sample at different layers and conduct water content test.
from the values find out the dry density of soil and water content and draw a graph
between them and note down the maximum dry density and optimum water content of the
compacted soil sample at highest point on the curve.