Effects of specimen thickness on apparent swelling pressure evolution of compacted bentonite

Abstract

With the interests to see specimen thickness (hsp) effect on apparent swelling pressure (ps) of compacted bentonite and capture characteristics of ps development during wetting bentonite specimens (ps evolution, hereafter), a series of tests to measure ps of compacted bentonite specimens with a dry density (ρd) range of 0.99–1.76 Mg/m3 and a specimen thickness (hsp) range of 2–10 mm were conducted. Test results suggest: (1) ps evolution generally has common characteristics with four feature points chronologically: peak (tp, pp), valley (tv, pv), initial equilibrium (tei, pei) and an equilibrium (teq, peq), where, tp, tv, tei and teq represent time (t) and pp, pv, pei, and peq denote ps of the four feature points, respectively; (2) within the tested range, hsp effect is generally minor on ps at feature points, and pp, pv, pei, and peq have well correlations with specimen final dry density (ρdf); (3) time scale for specimens with different hsp can be well unified by a time coefficient χsp (=hsp/√t).