Engineering Properties and Micro-Structural Characteristics of Cohesive Soil in the Interactive Marine & Terrestrial Deposit

Cohesive soil of the interactive marine & terrestrial sediment is deposited along the north side of the Yangtze River estuary of China. The natural deposit has poor physical properties, whose natural moisture content is close to or greater than the liquid limit and the void ratio is close to or greater than one, which is similar to that of the natural soft marine clay, while the former have much higher in-situ strength and sensitivity than the latter. Oedometer tests and corresponding micro-structural tests under different consolidation stresses are performed on both the undisturbed and the remolded interactive deposit soil to investigate the reason which causes the abnormal combination between the poor physical properties and good mechanic characteristic indexes. It is found that the natural interactive deposit soil, which belongs to strong structural soil, shows good uniformity between micro-structural change and macro- mechanical properties.