Plastic Limit, Liquid Limit and Undrained Shear Strength of Soil—Reappraisal
This article has a reply.
VIEW THE REPLYThis article has a reply.
VIEW THE REPLYPublication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 129, Issue 8
Abstract
The concept that plasticity index of soils can be defined as a range of water contents producing a 100-fold variation in undrained shear strength has been experimentally verified with the help of a large number of tests on soils of diverse nature. This has led to the redefinition of the plastic limit as the water content at which undrained shear strength is around 170 kN/m2. Undrained shear strength of a soil at the liquid limit can be considered to be around 1.7 kN/m2. Accordingly, both the liquid limit and the plastic limit have been determined in the present work by a single consistent method, i.e., the Swedish fall cone method. The undrained shear strength-water content relationship has been found to be log-linear for a wide range of water contents beginning from lower than the plastic limit to higher than the liquid limit. This resulted in the formulation of an expression for predicting undrained shear strength of a remolded soil at any water content based solely on its liquid limit and plastic limit.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Ballard, G. E. H., and Weeks, W. F.(1963). “Human error in determining plastic limit of cohesive soils.” Mater. Res. Stand., 3(9), 726–729.
Belvisco, R., Clampoli, S., Cotecchia, V., and Federico, A.(1985). “Use of cone penetrometer to determine consistency limits.” Ground Eng., 18(5), 21–22.
Federico, A.(1983). “Relationships and for remolded clayey soils at high water content.” Riv. Ital. Geotec., XVII(1), 38–41.
Hansbo, S. (1957). “A new approach to the determination of the shear strength of clay by the fall cone test.” Swedish Geotech Institute Proc., Stockholm, 14, 1–48.
Kenny, T. C.(1963). “Atterberg limits.” Correspondence Geotech., 13, 159–162.
Mitchell, J. K. (1993). Fundamentals of soil behaviour, Wiley, New York.
Nagaraj, T. S., Srinivasa Murthy, B. R., and Vatsala, A.(1990). “Prediction of soil behaviour. Development of a generalised approach.” Ind. Geotech. J., 20(4), 288–306.
Nagaraj, T. S., Srinivasa Murthy, B. R., and Vatsala A. (1994). Analysis and prediction of soil behaviour, Wiley Eastern Limited, India.
Norman, L. E. J.(1958). “A comparison of values of liquid limit determined with apparatus having bases of different hardness.” Geotechnique, 8, 79–83.
Russel, E. R., and Mickle, J. L.(1970). “Liquid limit values by soil moisture tension.” J. Soil Mech. Found. Div., Am. Soc. Civ. Eng., 96(3), 967–989.
Skempton, A. W., and Northey, R. D.(1953). “The sensitivity of clays.” Geotechnique, 3, 30–53.
Whyte, I. L.(1982). “Soil plasticity and strength—A new approach using extrusion.” Ground Eng., 15(1), 16–24.
Wood, D. M. (1985). “Index properties and consolidation history.” Proc., 11th Int. Conf. on Soil Mechanics and Foundation Engineering, San Francisco, 703–706.
Wroth, C. P. (1979). “Correlation of some engineering properties of soils.” 2nd Int. Conf. on Boss, Imperial College, London, 121–132.
Wroth, C. P., and Wood, D. M.(1978). “The correlation of index properties with some basic engineering properties of soils.” Can. Geotech. J., 15(2), 137–145.
Youssef, M. S., E. L. Ramli, A. H., and E. I. Demery, M. (1965). “Relationship between shear strength, consolidation, liquid limit and plastic limit for remolded clays.” Proc., 6th Int. Conf. on Soil Mechanics, Montreal, 126–129.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Aug 14, 2000
Accepted: Oct 20, 2002
Published online: Jul 15, 2003
Published in print: Aug 2003
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Citations
Download citation
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.