Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

Biswas Uprety
Email: uprety.biswas84@gmail.com, Ph.no.:+916398610665
Civil Department, Lovely Professional University, Phagwara, Punjab, India

ABSTRACT
The expansive soil problems lead to structural and geotechnical engineering challenges all
over the world with costs more than billions annually. Expansive soils are those whose
volume changes with the change in the moisture content. It should be noted that, the
expansive soil problems can occur in both arid/semi-arid soils or humid environment
where the plasticity index (Ip) of the soil is very high characterizing high swelling
potential. Buildings and other structures like bridges, pipelines, pavement works and other
construction works are always subjected to expansive soil problems and these damages
occurring are twice as much as caused by floods, earthquakes, landslides, soil erosion. By
understanding the characteristics and behaviour of these type of soils engineers and
scientists will be able to find out the suitable solution for these types of soils. This paper
reviews the nature and extent of expansive soils, its mineralogy, shrinkage-swell
behaviour, as well as causes of expansive soil and treatments.

Keywords: Expansive, Shrinkage, Swelling, Active zone, Diffuse-double layer

Introduction
A highly plastic soil that contains Montmorillonite and other ideal clay minerals are
expansive soil or swelling soil. Expansive soil is a commonly found problem which has made
scientists very concern about the design, maintenance, and operating of structural and
highway systems. Expansive soils can be found in arid/semi-arid regions where even
moderate expansive soils can cause significant damage to the structure. They can also be
found in the humid environment where the plasticity index (Ip) of these soils are very high
and causes extreme damage to the structure. The mechanism and behaviour of an expansive
soil are affected by many factors, among which the major ones are the availability of
moisture, and the type and amount of the clay-size particles in the soil. It should be noted that
when the water changes in expansive soil, the volume change takes place as well. These
volume changes cause either swelling or shrinkage so expansive soils are also known as
swell/shrink soils (Ardani, 1992; Day, 2000; Jones & Jefferson, 2012; Zemenu et al., 2009;
Ito and Azam, 2010; Liu et al., 2015). Although expansion sometimes can be the result of the
actions of the chemicals in the soil, most of the times soils which have swelling and
shrinkage behaviour contain expansive clay minerals. It can be concluded to the fact that, the
more the clay present in the soil, the higher the swelling and shrinking behaviour and the
more water the soil can absorb. In addition, the more water they absorb, the more their
volume increases. In other words, we can say that when the water is absorbed by these types
of soils, they volume increase would take place and hence they would swell. In the contrary,
the shrinkage happens when the soil loose moisture. Researchers have reported the safe
percentage of expansion smaller or equal to 10% for most of the expansive clays (Jones &
Jefferson, 2012). In order to determine the shrinkage and swelling amount of the soil, the
moisture content in the near-surface zone can be found out. Usually most of the significant
action takes place in the depth not more than 3 meters, even the tree roots exist in the area,
this amount can be extended. The presence and characteristics of fine-grained clay-rich soils

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

makes them capable enough to absorb large amount of moisture which makes them heavy
and sticky. In the contrary, when they lose moisture, the soil become very hard which leads
them to shrink and have cracks on their body. This procedure is known as "swell/shrinkage"
behaviour (Jones & Jefferson, 2012).
For this, there is a need for both researchers and geotechnical engineers to come up with the
theory and practice with respect to expansive soil stabilisation. This paper presents a review
on the stabilisation of expansive soils using various techniques. This paper discusses the
different causes of expansive soils and various explored methods and possible solutions for
the expansive soil.
1. Expansive Soil Behaviour
1.1. Identification of Expansive Soil
The safety, success and economy of the structure strongly depends on the situation of the
rock and soil at the place as well as the interaction and behaviour of the ground materials
during and after the construction. One of the most significant problems in expansive soils is
large amount of ground deformations which is the result of shrinkage and swelling of the soil.
The excessive movements lead to both damage and negative impact on the structural
performance in terms of time and cost (Reddy et al. 2009). Therefore, identifying the
expansive soils can help both geotechnical engineers and researchers minimize the imposed
damages resulted from the expansive soil to the various structure. Expansive soil can be
identified in the two following categorizations; (1) Those that are used for mineralogical
identification, and (2) those used for direct physical properties (Ardani, 1992). It should be
noted that mineralogical identification methods are not only very time-consuming, but also
requires special equipment and expertise. Therefore, most experts prefer simple identification
tests which are based on various physical properties of the soil.

Figure 1: Cracks in Expansive Soil

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

1.2. Expansion Mechanism

Expansive soils are those soils which generally exhibit a large amount of volume changes due
to changes in the environment and moisture content of the soil. These soils contain clay
particles having one or more minerals which are capable of absorbing moisture. When the
moisture is absorbed, these particles expand and hence, the materials containing the clays
would have expansion (Ardani, 1992). The soil mineralogy can be explained as the chemical
organization of molecules into sheets that results in having the soil material known as clay
smaller than 0.002 millimetre, which have the ability to shrink and swell easily. The clay
particles are made up of various layers, either 1:1 or 2:1. If the clay particles are of 1:1 layer,
they would be slightly expansive in nature. On the other hand, if the clay particles are made
of 2:1 layer, they would be highly expansive in nature. It is worth mentioning that the non-
expansive clay minerals do not exist. Clay minerals are hydrous aluminium phyllosilicates
minerals which are fine grained with sheet like structures and very high specific surface
areas. The clay minerals are the combination of silicon-oxygen tetrahedral, magnesium or
aluminium, and the gibbsite sheet or brucite in the octahedral layer (Lucian, 2008).
Researches and experiments have shown that Montmorillonite minerals present in the clay
particles have the greatest volume change in comparison to all the other clay minerals. This
phenomenon can be visualized as the penetration of the water into the interlayer molecular
spaces in Montmorillonite minerals. It should be noted that if the sodium exists in these
minerals, it can cause swelling of the clay multiple times its real volume. Vertical in situ
suction profile can be used to present the effect of Montmorillonite minerals on expansive
soils (Ardani, 1992). The major parameters which causes the potential expansiveness of the
given soil are: (1) The type and swelling potential of the clay mineral, (2) the water content of
the soil, and (3) the density of the soil (Ardani, 1992).
1.3. Characterization of Expansive Soil
During the formation of mineral, the normally found cation is replaced by another due to its
abundant availability. For example, when Al+3 replace Si+4 there is a shortage of one
positive charge, which appears as negative charge on clay surface. This is called isomorphous
substitution. It is clear that due to isomorphous substitution clay particles consist of
superficial negative charges (Schmitz, 2006, Sridharan and Choudhury, 2008). As a result,
electrostatic forces exist between the exchangeable cations and negative surface charges
within the clay-pore fluid media whose strength is dependent on the chemistry of the
exchangeable cation (Schmitz, 2006).
To maintain neutrality within the clay-pore fluid media, there is a natural affinity for the
counter ions to be attracted onto the surface of clay particles, thereby decreasing number of
cations with distance from the clay surface. This difference in concentration produces the
surface electrostatic property known as the diffuse double layer, and the amount of cations
required for maintaining neutrality on the surface of the clay is called cation exchange
capacity (Yadav and Tiwari, 2017a). This double layer thereby causes a separation between
the minerals and particles, followed by swelling behaviour (Schmitz, 2006) for expandable
clay minerals like montmorillonite. It is clear that the diffuse double layer has influence on all
of the engineering properties of clayey soil, especially on the hydraulic conductivity (Besq
et al., 2003, Sridharan and Nagaraj, 2005, Schmitz, 2006). Increase in the diffuse double
layer thickness results in reduction of the hydraulic conductivity and the opposite is the case
when the thickness of the double layer is decreased (Sridharan and Choudhury, 2008). This in

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

general provides the mechanism for the shrink/swell behaviour of expansive soils with
moisture variation.
2. Foundation option for Expansive soil
2.1. Pile and Beam /Pier and Beam Foundation

Figure 2: Pier and Beam foundation (Jones and Jefferson, 2012)

In this case, for the purpose of supporting the structural loads and transferring the loads to the
piers and piles, the foundation should consist of a ground beam. In order to isolate the
structure and prevent uplift from swelling between the pier/pile and ground beam, a void is
supplied. Floors are then constructed as floating slabs. The piers/piles can be explained as
reinforced concrete shafts with or without belled bottoms, steel piles driven or pushed, or
helical pile which is used to transfer loads to stable strata. Under-reamed bottoms and helical
piers/piles can perform successfully in soils with a high swell potential overcoming the
impractical length. Otherwise straight shaft piers/piles would be required in this situation. In
addition, under-reamed bottoms and helical piers/piles can be used in the regions where the
loss of skin friction due to increasing groundwater levels is possible. Figure 14 illustrates a
typical pier and beam foundation from US practice (Jones & Jefferson, 2012).
It is worth mentioning that there should be enough anchorage below the active zone. Pier/pile
diameters are kept small, which is typically 300 to 450 mm diameters. Any smaller size will
result in poor concrete placement and related defects, e.g. void spaces. Other problems that
can occur include 'mushrooming' next to the top of the pier/pile, which if occurs presents
additional vicinity for uplift forces to act. Cylindrical cardboard forms are a solution to avoid
this in many countries. They are usually employed and removed after the beam is cast to
prevent a means to transmit swell pressures. It is important to mention that all the approaches
are strong enough to prevent possible pathways to let water to enter to deeper layers as this
will cause deep seated swelling (Jones & Jefferson, 2012).
2.2. Stiffened Rafts
Stiffened slabs are usually reinforced concrete, although in countries like the United States
post tensioned systems are widely used. Bending moments, shear and deflections that are
associated with structural loads and swell pressure loads are determined in design procedures.

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

Figure 3 shows the general layout used commonly in the United States (Jones & Jefferson
2012).

Figure 3: Stiffened Raft (Jones and Jefferson, 2012)

Figure 4: Profiles After Construction for Various Stiffness of Raft (a) Profile with No Load Applied,
(b) Profile with Infinitely Stiff Slab, (c) Profile with Flexible Slab (Jones & Jefferson, 2012)

The slab should be assumed as a beam resting on a loaded plate or an elastic medium for
designing the stiffened rafts. Flexibility is shown during the actual movement of the slab and
hence, is something between these two movements. All three modes of movement are
presented in Figure 4 (Jones & Jefferson, 2012). The geotechnical information required are
shape, size, and properties of the distorted soils surface that developed beneath the slab.
These are dependent on many parameters such as heave, soil stiffness, initial water content,
water distributions, climate, time post construction, loading and slab rigidity. Centre of the
slab is usually subjected to severe long-term deformation. Since, evapotranspiration through
the slab does not take place it causes the largest increase in water content near to the centre of
the slab. Hence, this can solve the deformation problem at the centre of the slab. On the other
hand, it is found that the maximum differential heave varies from 33 to 100 % of total

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

maximum heave. When there is increase in water content in the exteriors of a structure before
the interior areas heave can occur on the edges (Jones & Jefferson, 2012).

2.3. (Modified) Continuous Perimeter Footing

Shallow footing should be avoided whenever expansive soils exist in a region. However, if
they are used in such areas some modifications would be required in order to reduce the
effect of shrinkage/swelling which are:
• Narrowing width of footing,
• Void spaces should be provided within support beam/wall so that loads are
concentrated at isolated points,
• Perimeter reinforcement should be increased and should be taken this into the floor
slab stiffening foundations (Jones & Jefferson, 2012).

Table I: Foundation types used in expansive soils (after Nelson & Miller, 1992; NHBC
2011a)

3. Treatment of Expansive soil

(Ardani, 1992) presented some methods for the treatment of expansive soil which are:
• Sub-excavation and removal of expansive soil and replacing or backfilling with non-
expansive soil.
• Applying heavy load to balance the pressure due to swelling.
• Preventing entering of water to the soil and drainage of water from the soil by
encapsulation.
• Mechanical stabilization.
• Stabilization by using various chemical admixtures
3.1. Pre-Wetting of Expansive Soil
Pre-wetting is an old method, popularly applied in the past for mitigation of swelling in
expansive soils. In this method of treatment, before the construction work, expansive soils are

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

flooded by water to create a moisture-rich environment, which results the soil to absorb to
water and swell, thereby creating a pre-construction heave. The basic concept behind this
method is that pre-saturation of the soil causes it to swell to the maximum level so that
subsequent wetting of the soil during or after construction would be incapable of engendering
harmful heaving, allowing to maintain constant volume even at high change in moisture
content. However, under actual field conditions, maintaining the expansive soil at high
moisture levels constantly during the entire phase of construction not possible and thus, as
stated by Nelson et al. (2015), the results of pre-wetting are not very authentic or reliable and
not usually recommended.
Though stated unreliable, this method has proven to be successfully worked in cases where
the pre-wetted expansive soils have high hydraulic conductivity which enabled the soaking
process to be completed in a short duration. For expansive soils which have low values of
hydraulic conductivity show low efficiency for pre-wetting technique, although the
conventional method is to use materials like organic compounds with hydrophilic head and
hydrophobic tail commonly known as surfactants to speed up the process of water seepage
through the expansive soil layer (Das, 2010).

3.2. Application of Heavy Loads for Balancing swelling Pressure

Loading the expansive soil with pressure higher than the pressure caused due to swelling can
be used to prevent the expansion of soil. Buildings and structures which carry heavy loads are
seen to be effective for providing the load to balance the swelling pressure while the
pavements loads are not enough for preventing the expansion of soil. However, this method
can be applied in road/highway construction as well where the soil is less expansive or causes
low swelling pressure (Ardani, 1992).

3.3. Sub-excavation and Removal of Expansive Soil and Replacing with Non-
Expansive Soil
Sub-excavation and replacement involve removal and replacing or backfilling of the
expansive subgrade soils with non-expansive soils. The replaced material or soil should not
cause problems with respect to the in-situ material. For example, in sub-excavation and
replacement projects granular soils should never be used. This is because the granular soils
cause the underlying in-situ material to collect water at its surface.
Impermeable and preferably non-swelling are the ideal characteristics of backfill materials
like silts, clayey silts, silty clays, or some clays. Backfill material which are remoulded in situ
soil, should be replaced and compacted with suitable moisture content and density control.
3.4. Preventing Entry of Water to the Expansive Soil by Encapsulation
(Ardani, 1992) has reported Catalytically Blown Asphalt Membranes as a successful
technique for reducing the subgrade moisture variations and the associated volume change of
expansive soil in Colorado. The use of the asphalt membrane has been admired during the
late 1960’s and early 1970’s (Ardani, 1992).
The catalytically blown asphalt membrane was placed on all cuts of the bases of the
expansive soil for the project located just west of the village of Elk Springs on US 40. Four
hundred and forty-five tonnes of catalytically blown asphalt membrane was used to cover 2
lane roadways of 2 miles. The rate of application of catalytically blown asphalt membrane
was 1.3 gallons per square yard which is approximately 3/16 of an inch (Brakey, 1968).

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

Catalytically blown asphalt membrane was placed on a cut base on the Agate- North project
also, located 65 miles east of Denver on Interstate 70 as reported by (Ardani, 1992). Moisture
cells were equipped to record the moisture change under the asphalt membrane and under the
control sections. The results have shown that soil moisture in the control section has been
seven to eight percent more than the optimum point and the soil moisture directly under the
asphalt membrane has been constant and staying at optimum. It should be noted to provide a
uniform and smooth surface prior to the placement of the membrane (Ardani, 1992).
3.5. Mechanical Stabilization
Mechanical stabilization which is also known as compaction, is the compression of soil with
the application of mechanical energy. Although there would not be much difference in
moisture content in this procedure, the densification occurs due to the expulsion of air from
soil voids. It should be noted that if there is significant change in moisture content in these
soils, this method may not be valuable. During the compaction, the fine content, fraction
smaller than about 75 μm should be appropriate to get the desired degree of compaction. The
reason behind this is during the compaction inter particle bonding and cohesion interferes
with particle rearrangement (Little & Nair, 2009).

3.6. Reinforcement
Soil reinforcement as a mechanical means of stabilising expansive soils involves the use of
geosynthetic or fibrous materials which can be in the form of geonet, geogrid, geo-composite
geotextile, and geocell or just randomly distributed fibres of synthetic or natural origin
(Hejazi et al., 2012). It means that it often requires the usage or placement of the
abovementioned randomly or specifically engineered components in the soil mass, and it
gives rise to a spatial three-dimensional (3D) reinforcement network in the form of weaving
(or interlocking) the soil grains into a unit mass having improved mechanical as well as other
required performance. A diverse review of synthetics and natural fibres for soil reinforcement
for expansive soil has been done by Hejazi et al. (2012), explaining the influence of some
randomly distributed fibres on various engineering properties of soils.
Table I: Summary of various synthetic/natural fibres used for soil reinforcement (C.
Ikeagwuani, 2019)

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

3.7. Solid Waste as Stabilizers

Solid wastes are produced in large quantities in municipal areas. Such wastes are basically
made up of wood, glass, paper, plastics, rubber scraps, reusable goods, metals, plant debris
and others with organic material as the major constituent (Puppala et al., 2007). The
management and disposal of such solid wastes produced in large quantities are of
environmental challenges, e.g. landfills. However, in recent years, these materials are used in
the field of soil stabilization and seems promising to overcome the environmental challenges.

Signes et al. (2016) studied argillaceous marlstone to determine the influence of rubber
particle crumbs addition on swelling capacity of the soil and thus recorded a declination from
3.71% to 1.37% at 25% addition of the rubber crumb particles on the soil. A common type of
solid waste derived from gypsum waste plasterboard known as recycled basanite was used by
Kamei et al. (2013) to study its influence on durability of cement-modified soft clay. They
reported the stabilised soil to be durable since the treated soil lost a small amount of its
Unconfined Compressive Strength from the 1st to the 3rd cycle which was almost regained at
the 5th cycle with basanite-soil ratio of 10% at cement-soil ratios of 5% and 10% applied. In
a similar study, Ahmed et al. (2011) stabilised clayey soil with gypsum waste plasterboard
and recorded about 700% increase in 28-d Unconfined Compressive Strength of the soil.
Similarly, other studies have shown promising results in the use of different solid wastes for
soil stabilisation (Seda et al., 2007, Dunham-Friel and Carraro, 2011).

3.8. Chemical Admixtures as Stabilizers

One of the most economical and effective added materials in stabilizing the expansive soil is
lime. The treatment depth is limited to about 8 to 12 inches by conventional method (Ardani,
1992; Calik and Sadoglu, 2014). There are various techniques for stabilizing the expansive
soil using lime. (Ardani, 1992) has reported two methods of lime-tilled and lime shaft
stabilization as the most practical ones used by Colorado DOT. Since lime cannot dissolve in
water, distributing lime through natural soils with water in bore holes have not been
successful. Lime till stabilization seals and decreases the swelling potential successfully when
it is used with natural soil up to the desired depth. There are a number of projects which used
this method and stabilized the soil by mixing the soil with lime (1 percent to 5 percent
hydrated lime) to depth ranging from 1 ft. to 3 ft. (Ardani, 1992).

Additives which chemically react with the soil and/or other additives, usually in the presence
of sufficient water content to give rise to physicochemical interactions in the soil matrix are
called non-traditional agents. These materials include but are not limited to industrial by-
product materials (such as lime kiln dust, pulverised coal bottom ash, steel slag, cement kiln
dust , ground granulated blast furnace slag, mine tailings, and others), other waste products
containing calcium oxide content (such as waste paper sludge ash), ionic compounds,
sulphonated oils, and polymers (Petry and Little, 2002, Alazigha et al., 2016, Fasihnikoutalab
et al., 2017, Soltani et al., 2017b, Soltani et al., 2018a, Estabragh et al., 2018).

Researchers believe that more researches and investigation should be performed on

understanding of lime-soil interaction due to lacking of sufficient information. There is still
not sufficient knowledge and understanding in determining the depth of treatment for
expansive soils and suitable quantity of lime and various researches and investigations should
be done in this field. There are number of variables which affect this particular issue which
are soil type, lime type, percentage of lime and curing conditions which includes temperature,

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

time and moisture. The investigations must be based on basic engineering properties rather
than various empirical methods and tests results.

Table II: Soil Stabilisation approaches applied to expansive soils (Nelson and Miller, 1992)

Conclusion
Expansive soils are one of the most serious issue faced by the civil engineers all around the
world. Expansive soils are one of the most major ground related hazards found worldwide
causing economical expense of billions of dollars annually. Expansive soils are found all over
the world and are mostly in arid/semi-arid regions of the world, where their absorption
potential for large water content changes on exposure/deficient which water can cause
extensive changes in soil volume. This paper has reviewed the expansive soil, its causes and
various treatments comprehensively. Removing the expansive soil and backfilling with non-
expansive soil can be a reliable solution, however sometimes it is time-consuming and
uneconomical. Also, granular soils should not be used solely for sub-excavation and
backfilling of the soil as they make the underlying in-situ material to collect water at their
surface. Mechanical stabilization which involves compaction is rarely used and the method
may not be effective if the soils are subjected to significant moisture change. Ponding has
been reported as the most economical and effective applied technique for pre-wetting of soil.
As the natural cracks are open due to desiccation during summer or dry season, these times
are considered as the ideal time for ponding.

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 Expansive Soil: Causes and Prevention

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