TECHNICAL PAPERS
May 1, 1996

Electrical Resistivity of Compacted Clays

Publication: Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 122, Issue 5

Abstract

Relationships between electrical resistivity, compaction conditions, hydraulic conductivity, and index properties are reported for ten soils that have been used for constructing compacted soil liners having low field-scale hydraulic conductivity ( <1 × 10 −9 m/s). The electrical resistivity of compacted clay is sensitive to compaction conditions, with lower electrical resistivity obtained for compaction at higher water content or greater compactive effort. A unique relationship exists between electrical resistivity and initial (as-compacted) saturation for each clay that is independent of compactive effort. A unique relationship between hydraulic conductivity and electrical resistivity exists for some, but not all soils. Electrical resistivity is also correlated with index properties. Soils with higher liquid limit or plasticity index, a greater percentage of fines or clay, or a smaller coarse fraction have lower electrical resistivity.

Get full access to this article

View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.

References

1.
Abu-Hassanein, Z. (1994). “Using electrical-resistivity measurements as a quality-control tool for compacted clay liners,” MSc thesis, Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis.
2.
Acar, Y., and Oliveri, I. (1989). “Pore-fluid effects on the fabric and hydraulic conductivity of laboratory-compacted clay.”Transp. Res. Rec. 1219, Transp. Res. Board, Washington, D.C., 144–159.
3.
Archie, G.(1942). “Electrical-resistivity log as an aid in determining some reservoir characteristics.”Trans. Am. Inst. of Min. Engrg., 146, 318–319.
4.
Arulanandan, K., and Muraleetharan, K.(1988). “Level ground soil-liquefaction analysis using in-situ properties: I.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 114(7), 753–770.
5.
Arulanandan, K., and Smith, S.(1973). “Electrical dispersion in relation to soil structure.”J. Soil Mech. and Found. Div., ASCE, 99(12), 1113–1132.
6.
ASTM. (1993). Annual book of standards, volume 04.08, soil and rock; dimension stone; geosynthetics. American Society for Testing and Materials, Philadelphia, Pa.
7.
Benson, C. (1994). “Research developments in clay-liner construction.”Proc., 32nd Annu. Int. Solid Waste Exposition, Solid Waste Association of North America, Silver Spring, Md., 81–93.
8.
Benson, C., and Boutwell, G. (1992). “Compaction control and field-scale hydraulic conductivity of clay liners.”Proc., 15th Annu. Madison Waste Conf., Sept. 24–25, Madison, Wis., 935–948.
9.
Benson, C., and Daniel, D.(1990). “Influence of clods on the hydraulic conductivity of compacted clay.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 116(8), 1231–1248.
10.
Benson, C., and Daniel, D.(1994). “Minimum thickness of compacted soil liners: I-stochastic models.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 120(1), 129–152.
11.
Benson, C., and Trast, J.(1995). “Hydraulic conductivity of thirteen compacted clays.”Clays and clay minerals, 43(6), 669–681.
12.
Benson, C., Zhai, H., and Rashad, S.(1994a). “Statistical method to specify sampling frequencies for construction quality control of compacted soil liners.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 120(10), 1704–1724.
13.
Benson, C., Zhai, H., and Wang, X.(1994b). “Estimating the hydraulic conductivity of compacted clay liners.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 120(2), 336–387.
14.
Boutwell, G., and Hedges, C. (1989). “Evaluation of waste-retention liners by multivariate statistics.”Proc., 12th Int. Conf. on Soil Mech. and Found. Engrg., A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 815–818.
15.
Boynton, S., and Daniel, D.(1985). “Hydraulic-conductivity tests on compacted clay.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 111(4), 465–478.
16.
COE. (1980). “Engineering manual EM-1110-2-1906, laboratory soils testing.”U.S. Army Corps of Engrs. Manual, Chief of Engrs., Dept. of the Army, Washington, D.C.
17.
Daniel, D. (1990). “Summary review of construction quality control of earthen liners.”Waste Containment Systems: Construction, Regulation, and Performance, GSP No. 26, R. Bonaparte, ed., ASCE, New York, N.Y., 175–189.
18.
Daniel, D., and Benson, C.(1990). “Water content-density criteria for compacted soil liners.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 116(12), 1811–1830.
19.
Fratalocchi, E., Pasqualini, E., and Manassero, M. (1995). “Micropore permeability of compacted clay liners.”Waste Disposal by Landfill-Green '93, R. Sarsby, ed., A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam, Netherlands, 251–256.
20.
Garcia-Bengochea, I., Lovell, C., and Altschaeffl, A.(1979). “Pore distribution and permeability of silty clay.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 105(7), 839–856.
21.
Hamed, J., Acar, Y., and Gale, R.(1990). “Pb(II) removal from kaolinite by electrokinetics.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 117(2), 241–271.
22.
Heigold, P., Gilkeson, R., Cartwright, K., and Reed, P.(1979). “Aquifer transmissivity from surficial electrical methods.”Ground Water, 17(4), 338–345.
23.
Heimovaara, T., Focke, A., Bouten, W., and Verstraten, J.(1995). “Assessing temporal variations in soil-water composition with time-domain reflectometry.”Soil Sci. Soc. of Am. J., 59, 689–698.
24.
Huntley, D.(1986). “Relations between permeability and electrical resistivity in granular aquifers.”Ground Water, 24(4), 466–474.
25.
Jackson, P. (1975). “An electrical-resistivity method for evaluating the in-situ porosity of clean marine sands.”Marine Geotechnol., 1(2), 91–115.
26.
Johnson, G., Crumbley, W., and Boutwell, G. (1990). “Field verification of clay-liner hydraulic conductivity.”Waste Containment Sys., GSP No. 26, R. Bonaparte, ed., ASCE, New York, N.Y., 226–245.
27.
Kalinski, R., and Kelly, W.(1994). “Electrical-resistivity measurements for evaluating compacted soil liners.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 120(2), 451–457.
28.
Keller, G., and Frischknecht, F. (1966). Electrical methods in geophysical prospecting, Pergamon Press, New York, N.Y.
29.
Kelley, W.(1977). “Geoelectric sounding for estimating aquifer hydraulic conductivity.”Ground Water, 15(6), 420–424.
30.
Kelly, W., and Peter, P.(1984). “Influence of anisotropy on relations between electrical and hydraulic properties of aquifers.”J. Hydro., 74, 311–321.
31.
Khire, M., Benson, C., and Bosscher, P. (1994). “Final cover hydrologic evaluation, phase III report.”Envir. Geotech. Rep. 94-4, Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis.
32.
Koerner, G., and Koerner, R. (1995). “Temperature behavior of field deployed HDPE geomembranes.”Proc., Geosynthetics '95, Industrial Fabrics Assoc. Int., St. Paul, Minn., 921–937.
33.
Kwader, T.(1985). “Estimating aquifer permeability from formation-resistivity factors.”Ground Water, 23(6), 762–766.
34.
Lambe, T.(1958). “The structure of compacted clays.”J. Soil Mech. and Found. Div., ASCE, 84(2), 2–34.
35.
Mazac, O., Kelley, W., and Landa, I.(1985). “A hydrogeophysical model for relations between electrical and hydraulic properties of aquifers.”J. Hydro., 79, 1–19.
36.
Mazac, O., Milena, C., Kelley, W., and Landa, I. (1990). “Determination of hydraulic conductivities by surface geoelectric methods.”Geotech. and Envir. Geophys., Vol. 2, S. Ward, ed., 125–131.
37.
McCarter, W.(1984). “The electrical-resistivity characteristics of compacted clays.”Geotechnique, 34(2), 263–267.
38.
McNeill, J. (1982). “Electromagnetic-resistivity mapping of contaminant plumes.”Proc., Nat. Conf. on Mgmt. of Uncontrolled Hazardous Waste Sites, U.S. EPA, Washington, D.C., 1–6.
39.
McNeill, J. (1990). “Use of electromagnetic methods for groundwater studies.”Geotech. and Envir. Geophys., Vol. 1, S. Ward, ed., 191–218.
40.
Mitchell, J. (1993). Fundamentals of soil behavior, 2nd ed., John Wiley and Sons, New York, N.Y.
41.
Mitchell, J., and Arulanandan, K.(1968). “Electrical dispersion in relation to soil structure.”J. Soil Mech. and Found. Div., ASCE, 94(2), 447–471.
42.
Mitchell, J., Hooper, D., and Campanella, R. (1965). “Permeability of compacted clay.”J. Soil Mech. and Found. Div., ASCE, 91(4), 41–65.
43.
Othman, M., and Luettich, S. (1994). “Compaction-control criteria for clay hydraulic barriers.”Transp. Res. Record 1462, Transp. Res. Board, Washington, D.C., pp. 28–35.
44.
Park, S., and Dickey, S.(1989). “Accurate estimation of conductivity of water from geoelectrical measurements—A new way to correct for clay.”Ground Water, 27(6), 786–792.
45.
Parkhomenko, E. (1967). Electrical properties of rocks, G. V. Keller, translator, ed., Plenum Press, New York, N.Y.
46.
Pfannkuch, H.-O. (1969). “On the correlation of electrical-conductivity properties of porous systems with viscous-flow transport coefficients.”Proc., first Int. Symp. on the Fundamentals of Transport Phenomena in Porous Media, Int. Assoc. Hydr. Res., Haifa, Israel, 42–53.
47.
Rhodes, J., Raats, P., and Prather, R.(1976). “Effect of liquid-phase electrical conductivity, water content, and surface conductivity on bulk soil electrical conductivity.”Soil Sci. Soc. of Am. J., 40, 651–655.
48.
Rivard, R., and Goodwin, T.(1978). “Geotechnical characteristics of compacted clays for earth embankments in the prairie provinces.”Can. Geotech. J., 15, 391–401.
49.
Sadek, M. (1993). “A comparative study of the electrical and hydraulic conductivities of compacted clays,” PhD thesis, Dept. of Civ. Engrg., Univ. of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, Calif.
50.
Thevanayagam, S.(1993). “Electrical response of two-phase soil: Theory and applications.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 119(8), 1250–1275.
51.
Trast, J. (1993). “Hydraulic conductivity of thirteen compacted clays.” MSc thesis, Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wis.
52.
Trast, J., and Benson, C.(1995). “Estimating field hydraulic conductivity at various effective stresses.”J. Geotech. Engrg., ASCE, 121(10), 736–739.
53.
Urish, D.(1981). “Electrical resistivity–hydraulic conductivity relationships in glacial outwash aquifers.”Water Resour. Res., 17(5), 1401–1408.
54.
Ward, S. (1990). “Resistivity and induced-polarization methods.”Geotech. and Envir. Geophys., Vol. 1, S. Ward, ed., 147–190.
55.
Worthington, P.(1977). “Influence of matrix conduction upon hydrogeophysical relationships in arenaceous aquifers.”Water Resour. Res., 13(1), 87–92.
56.
Worthington, P.(1979). “The influence of shale effects upon the electrical resistivity of reservoir rocks.”Geophys. Prospecting, 30, 673–687.

Information & Authors

Information

Published In

Go to Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
Journal of Geotechnical Engineering
Volume 122Issue 5May 1996
Pages: 397 - 406

History

Published online: May 1, 1996
Published in print: May 1996

Permissions

Request permissions for this article.

Authors

Affiliations

Zeyad S. Abu-Hassanein
Grad. Res. Asst., Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Carnegie-Mellon Univ., Pittsburgh, PA 15213; formerly, Grad. Res. Asst., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI 53706.
Craig H. Benson
Assoc. Prof., Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.
Lisa R. Blotz, Members, ASCE
Res. Asst., Dept. of Civ. and Envir. Engrg., Univ. of Wisconsin, Madison, WI.

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.

Cited by

View Options

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Get Access

Access content

Please select your options to get access

Log in/Register Log in via your institution (Shibboleth)
ASCE Members: Please log in to see member pricing

Purchase

Save for later Information on ASCE Library Cards
ASCE Library Cards let you download journal articles, proceedings papers, and available book chapters across the entire ASCE Library platform. ASCE Library Cards remain active for 24 months or until all downloads are used. Note: This content will be debited as one download at time of checkout.

Terms of Use: ASCE Library Cards are for individual, personal use only. Reselling, republishing, or forwarding the materials to libraries or reading rooms is prohibited.
ASCE Library Card (5 downloads)
$105.00
Add to cart
ASCE Library Card (20 downloads)
$280.00
Add to cart
Buy Single Article
$35.00
Add to cart

Media

Figures

Other

Tables

Share

Share

Copy the content Link

Share with email

Email a colleague

Share