The consolidation characteristics of an unsaturated compacted soil

Abstract

The compacted soils are extensively employed as mineral liners or a sealing system, constructed under municipal solid waste and other containment hazardous materials to prevent or minimize the leakage of pollutant liquids and gases into ground water and sublayers. This article presents a detailed experimental study on settlement characteristics, which are required for the construction of a sealing system. For the experimental study where a compacted unsaturated soil taken from Adana in Turkey has been used, a special equipped consolidation cell has been designed and constructed. The matric suction adopted as independent stress-state variables has been controlled by using the axis translation technique. The consolidation tests have been performed under constant matric suction. Furthermore, the pressure plate tests for various net vertical stresses have been conducted. The test results have indicated that the settlement characteristics of a compacted soil as mineral liners and covers are highly affected by matric suction. The water retention capacity of mineral liners, an important factor for hydraulic conductivity, also changes with the vertical load. The compressibility decreases as the matric suction increases. It has been observed that there exists an exponential relationship between the compressive indexes (Ct, Dt) and matric suction.