A Study on the Influence of Unit Weight on Tensiometric Measurement

The unsaturated soil behavior is of primary importance in many of the field situations like flow of water through vadoze zone, deciding irrigation requirement for various crops, evapo-transpiration, deciding fate of contaminants in the geoenvironment etc. The reliability of these studies largely depends on the precise characterization of unsaturated soil, which includes the measurement of soil suction. One of the most important applications of measured values of soil suction is to obtain its variation with water content (gravimetric or volumetric) or saturation of the soil, which is termed as soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC). Tensiometer is one of the most popular methods of suction measurement and establishing SWCC. It is noted that there are different contrasting studies pertained to the effect of dry unit weight on measured soil suction. Therefore, the present study aims to investigate the role of dry unit weight on soil suction using tensiometric measurements for a locally available soil. SWCC has been obtained and the influence of dry unit weight on the SWCC is discussed in this paper.