Effect of Ph on Physical Properties of Fine-Grained Soils

Abstract

This paper describes Effect Of Ph On Physical Properties Of Fine-Grained Soils results of an experimental investigation to determine whether pH affects the cyclic strength of artificial and natural fine grained soils. As a result, the effects of several factors on the cyclic strength of fine-grained soils, such as cyclic shear stress and frequency, initial static shear stress, clay content, and clay mineralogy, are already relatively well studied.

Despite the advances made in this area, there are still some aspects concerning the undrained cyclic behavior of clayey soils that need to be studied further. The first group consisted of low plasticity artificial kaolin and illite-sand mixtures, while the second group consisted of a mixture of medium plasticity artificial bentonite-sand and natural clayey soil.

The effect of water salinity on the geotechnical properties of fine grained soil used in the Korchay dam core has been studied in this research. This dam is located in northwestern Iran.

Since there are a few percent of active clay minerals in the soil, changes in the soil’s geotechnical properties are not significant. However, the results showed that the Atterberg limits, compression index, and swelling index decrease, and consolidation coefficient and shear strength parameters increase as the salinity of pore water increases. The results of dispersion tests also showed that there is no dispersion in the soil in contact with saline water.

Conclusion

PH may affect to some degree the cyclic behavior of low plasticity kaolin and mixtures of illite-sand. For the kaolin-sand mixture in an acidic medium, a small increase in soil resistance to liquefaction was observed. The illite-sand mixture’s liquefaction potential increased slightly in both acidic and alkaline media. Results of this research showed that a small change in pH could affect clay’s cyclic strength.