COMPARISON OF THE PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL PROPERTIES OF THE DISPERSIVE AND SODIC SOILS

Abstract

Some cohesive soils show very little resistance when it comes to interaction with relatively pure water, however the water flow itself does not have to necessarily cause any damage in the soil structure. These soils are so poorly bonded, that this small amount of water flow can lead to structural breakdown. The effect caused several dike and earth dam damages and failures in the past years, therefore the behavior itself is considered as a geotechnical risk in the process of design. The dike breaches lead to the emergence of knowing how to identify and locate the areas and soil types, where the hazardous soils occur. In geotechnical engineering these soils are referred as dispersive soils, and their properties are known since the 1960s. In the recent years researches were carried out to get a better point of view of the reasons of these kind of behavior. Therefore the investigation of physical and chemical properties were made. The results showed that the dispersive behavior can be connected with the amount of dissolved salts in the soil extract. Since these are known as the origin of sodic soils, the relationship was investigated.

Keywords

• dispersive soil
• sodic soil
• physico-chemical composition
• pinhole test
• geotechnical risk
• geotechnical engineering