Natural Water Content as a Useful Index for Predicting Physical Properties of Ando :Soils in Japan

Abstract

The particle-size distribution of a soil is most widely used as an index for predicting the physical properties of soils. However, for the Ando soils, since the particle-size distribution is unsuitable owing to the difficulty of dispersion, the natural water content, water retention, and plasticity have been used as an index of the physical properties of soils (1–3). In the present short communication, we report that the natural water content is a useful index for predicting physical properties such as IS-bar water content, liquid limit, bulk density in the field state and sediment volume of Ando soils in Japan, based on the analysis of a correlation table. In this experiment, the natural water content corresponded to the water content of a field-moist state and was measured by using undisturbed core samples. A high correlation between the natural water content and sediment volume for the same soil samples as those used in this study was already reported (4), and will again be described here. Table 1 list...