Investigating some of the Engineering Properties of Durame soil (Southern Ethiopia)
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Date
2013-11
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
Project delays, failures and cost over-run are the results of inadequate and inappropriate soil
investigation. Therefore, a thorough and comprehensive geotechnical investigation is an essential
requirement to the design and construction of civil engineering projects.
This research is intended to investigate some of the engineering properties of Durame soil. To
achieve this objective samples from different parts of the city were collected and laboratory tests
were done on the collected samples.
Identifying the soil characteristic is essential to determine the type of test and test procedure that
is applied during sampling, sample preparation and testing. Accordingly, the soil under
investigation was identified as Lateritic soil.
Moisture content determination using oven temperature of l05°C and Air drying for 15 days
were carried out on the soil samples to investigate presence of loosely bound water of hydration.
It was found that there is considerable amount of structural water.
Atterberg Limits were done for different testing procedures on the soil samples to see effect of
test manipulation on concretionary bond. The liquid limit tests were carried out on soil
specimens mixed for 5 minutes and 30 minutes durations. It was observed from the test results
that the mixing durations has significant effect on the values of liquid limits. Accordingly, the
soil samples have been sensitive to test procedures.
Analysis of specific gravities of the soils using different pretreatment conditions showed that,
increase in drying temperature from an air-dried to 105oC oven drying temperature reduces
specific gravity of the soils.
Specific Gravity test, Particle Size Distribution, Atterberg Limit tests and Free Swell tests were
conducted on air dried and 105oc oven dried pretreatment conditions, and resulted in different
values.
According to the study for air dried and oven dried temperature of 105oc ; LL ranges between
44 – 79%, PI ranges between 16 – 42%,Clay fraction ranges between 15 – 75%, Free swell
ranges between 20-70% and Specific Gravity ranges between 2.52-2.97.
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One-dimensional consolidation tests were done and the soils have compression index ranging
from 0.219-0.596, recompression index ranging from 0.033-0.097, coefficient of consolidation
ranging from 0.012 to 0.351 cm2/sec.
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Keywords
Civil Engineering