The Swelling–Shrinkage Properties of Intact and Disturbed Clayey and Marly Soils: The Density Effect

Abstract

Expansive soils commonly encountered beneath foundations often lead to structural issues inducing expensive repairs. With the increase of the frequency of dry summers and irregular rainfall patterns, the clayey and marly soils become more and more sensitive to shrinking and swelling phenomena. So to find solutions and improve the knowledge on such phenomena especially in temperate countries where the saturation state is considered as the usual soil state, the impact of the soil density on shrinkage was studied by varying the compaction mode and introducing a swelling step before shrinkage. As expected, dynamically or statically compacted clayey or marly soils exhibited high shrinkage deformation when the soil had a low density. The swelling before shrinkage impacted the soil structure but ultimately had a low effect on shrinkage deformation. Swelling deformation was also influenced by density; the denser the soil, the more sensitive the compacted soil became to swelling. Furthermore, compaction modes induced differences in swelling or shrinkage amplitude that couldn’t be explained by microstructural observations. Finally, results demonstrated that intact soil behavior after shrinkage could be extrapolated from swelling–shrinkage tests conducted on remolded soil samples, thus decreasing the cost of field investigations.