CE 3A03 – Geotechnical Engineering I

Assignment 1 Peijun Guo

Date Assigned: Sept. 19/2019
Date Due: Sept. 26/2019 5:00 p.m.

1. A wet sand sample has a volume of 4.64×10-4 m3 and weights 8 N. After oven drying, the
weight reduces to 7.5 N. The specific gravity of soil grains is determined as Gs = 2.65.

(1) With this information, fill in all blanks in the phase diagram of Fig. 1.

Figure 1

(2) Calculate the water content, void ratio, the degree of saturation, the dry unit weight,
the saturated unit weight and the effective unit weight.

2. A soil specimen, 38 mm in diameter and 76 mm long, weights 168.0 g in its natural

condition. When dried completely in an oven the specimen weights 130.5 g. Given Gs =
2.73, determine the (a) water content, (b) void ratio, (c) degree of saturation, and (c)
saturated unit weight.

3. Given void raio e, water content w and the specific gravity Gs of solid particles, verify
the following relations. You need to use the phase diagram in Fig. 1 and fill in all the
blanks in the phase diagram.
G  G (1 + w)
(1)  d = s w (2)  = w s
1+ e 1+ e

4. A soil sample has a bulk unit weight of 19.6 kN/m3 and a water content of 10%. The
value of Gs (i.e. the specific gravity of soil grains) is 2.70. Calculate the void ratio and
degree of saturation of this sample. What would be the values of unit weight and water
content if the soil were fully saturated at the same void ratio?

(You are required to fill in all the blanks of the phase diagrams for all problems).