Effect of initial conditions on strength of unsaturated compacted loess soil

Abstract

The influence of grain size distribution, initial moisture, dry bulk density, and capillary suction on an increase in shear strength of unsaturated compacted silty loess soil is presented in the paper. The unsaturated soil strength is determined via the experimentally determined dependencies between the moisture-capillary suction and the effective shear strength parameters for saturated soil, c’, ’. It is demonstrated that the influence of capillary suction, moisture and dry bulk density on the strength of unsaturated compacted soil reduces with an increase of grain size in soil.