School of Vocational Engineering, Health and Sciences, RMIT University

EASC1081 - Soil Mechanics, Semester 1, 2017

TUTORIAL WEEK 3
CLASSIFICATION OF FINE-GRAINED SOILS

QUESTION 1
A fully saturated soil sample collected from a construction site had a mass of 4.6 kg. The natural moisture
content of the sample was found to be 26.7%. The Liquid Limit test on the soil yielded the following
set of data:

LIQUID LIMIT TEST DATA

Container number A1 A2 A3 A4
Blow count 15 31 23 39
Mass of the empty container (gm) 24.77 21.89 24.52 22.76
Mass of the container + wet soil (gm) 28.1 29.98 31.06 27.79
Mass of the container + dry soil (gm) 27.23 28.22 29.5 26.72

Based on the Atterberg Limits test data, the soil was found to fall exactly on the U-Line on the plasticity
chart [the equation of U-Line is given by PI = 0.9(LL-8)].
Based on the given information, answer the following questions:
i. Determine the mass of solid and water in the soil sample collected form the site.
ii. If the specific gravity of the solid phase is 2.65, determine the volume of the sample collected
from the site.
iii. Determine the Liquid Limit of the soil.
iv. Determine the Plasticity Index of the soil.
v. Determine the Plastic Limit of the soil sample.
vi. Determine the Liquidity Index of the natural soil and comment on the expected shear strength of
the soil collected from the site compared to its shear strength at Plastic Limit.
vii. Determine the type of the fine-grained soil using the plasticity chart.
viii. Determine the amount of water you need to add to or take off from the filed sample to bring it
just to the semi-solid state.
ix. Determine the amount of water you need to add to or take off from the field sample to bring it
just to the viscous liquid state.
x. If an additional 1.43 kg of water is added to the field sample, what state will the soil be in (i.e.,
solid, semi-solid, plastic, liquid etc.)?
xi. The soil sample collected from the field was subjected to a loading which resulted in drainage of
water and reduction in volume of the field soil sample. The load was then taken off and the mass
of the loaded soil sample was found to be 3.86 kg. Determine the state (i.e., solid, semi-solid,
plastic, liquid etc.) of the loaded soil sample.
xii. Determine the amount of water you need to add to or take off from the field sample to make the
Liquidity Index equal to 0.5.
QUESTION 2
i. Show that at Liquidity Index >1, the soil will be in liquid state.
ii. Show that at Liquidity Index <0 the soil will be in semi-solid state.
iii. Show that at Liquidity Index in the range 0-1, the soil will be in plastic state.

Useful formula: =

Figure 1: Plasticity chart (Source: AS1729)

 Flow Curve
40
39
38
37
36
Moisture contnet (%)

35
34
33
32
31
30
29
28
27
26
25
24
23
22
21
20
1 10 100
Blow count