Plastic Limit, Liquid Limit and Undrained Shear Strength of Soil—Reappraisal
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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.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 129 • Issue 8 • August 2003
Pages: 774 - 777
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
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