Special soil types

Lecture -5
 Introduction
• All pore pressure in saturated soil contributes to total
stress according to the effective stress principle.
• Pore pressure in unsaturated soil, on the other hand, is
generally tensile.
• The contribution of pore pressure to total stress depends
on the degree of saturation and pore size distribution.
• This contribution is not always 100%, making analysis of
the state of stress in unsaturated soil far more
complicated than the relatively simple case for saturated
conditions.
 Introduction
• Partially saturated soils, expansive or swelling soils,
and collapsing soils are planned to be covered under
special soils.
• These soils tend to belong to the residual soil group
rather than the sedimentary group, and, as with
residual soils, understanding their behavior generally
involves two basic factors:
1. Understanding the properties of the material
2. Understanding the seepage and pore pressure state in
which they exist, especially that above the water table
 Partially saturated soils

• Occurrence
• The principal factors that govern the existence
of partially saturated soils are:
1. Particle size (grading) of the soil
2. Climate
3. Depth of the water table
4. Topography
 Fine-grained soils
• With fine-grained soils, especially those made
up mostly of silt and clay-sized particles ( 0.06
mm), water cannot freely enter or freely drain
from the soil under due surface tension effects
at the air–water boundary.
• Soils, like porous stones, have an “air entry
value,” i.e., the pressure needed for air to enter
the soil.
• This is very high for clays.
 Fine-grained soils
• Once fine-grained soils become saturated,
they generally only become unsaturated by
evaporation at the ground surface, or any
other exposed surface, such as a cut slope.
• The evaporation process overcomes the
inability of water to drain from the soil in the
liquid phase.
 Influence of climate
• The influence of climate is twofold.
– If the climate is warm and wet, it promotes intense
weathering of parent rocks and therefore favors the formation
of fine-grained soils.
– It also means a plentiful supply of rain, inhibiting evaporation.
• Both these factors mean the soil is likely to be fully
saturated, except very close to the ground surface.
• If the climate is dry, the opposite applies; regardless of
temperature, the weathering process will be less intense
and residual soils are likely to be relatively coarse.
 Topography
• The depth of the water table and the
topography are closely related.
• Clearly, soils are much more likely to be fully
saturated in low-lying, poorly drained areas
(with shallow water tables) than in steep hilly
terrain where drainage can take place much
more readily and the water table is likely to be
deep.
 Parent rock
• Parent rocks or soil types also influence the state of the
soil.
• Hong Kong, for example, is relatively warm and wet, and it
might be reasonable to expect that soils here would be
fully saturated.
• However, the parent rock in Hong Kong is granite, which
has a large quartz component that is relatively resistant to
weathering.
• The result is that the residual soils in Hong Kong are fairly
coarse (silty sands) and therefore unlikely to be fully
saturated.
 Nonuniformity of residual soils
• The nonuniformity of residual soils also has an
influence on their degrees of saturation.
• Cracks, joints, and even coarse bedding planes
may provide “paths” along which evaporation
can occur, inducing the adjacent soil to be less
than fully saturated.
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• The application of conventional soil mechanics

concepts, especially the principle of effective
stress, to partially saturated soils, is not
straightforward, because partially saturated
soils are no longer two-phase systems.
• There are clearly three phases—solids, water,
and air.
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• Because of surface tension effects at the air–

water interface, the air pressure is not the
same as the pore water pressure.
• This complicates the relationship between
total stress, pore pressure, and effective
stress, and the conventional expression for
effective stress is no longer valid.
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• Various forms of an equivalent effective stress

equation for partially saturated soils have
been proposed.
• The first and probably the best known is that
of Bishop, which has the form.

    ua    ua  u w 
'
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• where
• σ’ = effective stress
• σ = total stress
• ua = pore air pressure
• uw = pore water pressure
• χ = parameter depending on degree of
saturation, with values from 0 to 1
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• The term ua − uw is normally used to designate

the “suction” (commonly called the matric
suction) in the soil.
• In soil slopes ua will usually approximate to
atmospheric pressure, while the pore water
pressure will be negative.
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• To help understand this equation, consider a

natural soil close to the ground surface.
• The air phase is considered to be continuous
throughout the soil and therefore at
atmospheric pressure.
• The air pressure (atmospheric) is thus zero, so
the equation becomes:
– σ’ = σ − χuw
 Mechanics of Partially Saturated Soils

• The effect of air in the soil is therefore to reduce the

influence of the pore pressure on the effective stress
in the soil (since χ < 1).
• This is to be expected because the pore pressure no
longer acts on the total cross section of the soil
mass.
• Figure in next slide illustrates the way the pore
pressure relates to the effective stress above the
water table, depending on the degree of saturation
and therefore the value of the parameter χ.
 Practical limitations

• Attempts to apply equations such as above to

analyze practical problems in terms of effective
stress have not met with much success.
• There are clearly two main difficulties in applying
this equation to practical situations.
1. Partially saturated soils are very unlikely to exist in
a constant state of saturation.
– Their degree of saturation is likely to rise and fall with
climatic effects, and relating degree of saturation to
weather effects is very difficult.
 Practical limitations

2. The measurement of the parameter χ and

relating it to degrees of saturation. Difficult and
time-consuming tests are needed to do this.
• The difficulty of analyzing unsaturated soils
using rigorous procedures has led to the
development of simpler “ad hoc”
(semiempirical) procedures, some of which
appear to be finding limited use in engineering
applications.
 Slope stability

• The principal interest in the analytical

treatment of partially saturated soils appears
to arise in relation to slope stability, in
particular the wish to be able to take account
of the varying pore pressure state with time,
as governed by weather conditions.
 Slope stability

• Two behavior “models” for handling partially

saturated soils are therefore required—one to
relate the pore pressure state in the ground to
weather and hydrological conditions and the other
to relate the soil strength to the pore pressure
state.
• The first of these involves a transient analysis of the
seepage state and the second a model that takes
account of variations in the degree of saturation.
 Lam, Fredlund and Barbour model

• Lam, Fredlund and Barbour (1987) have

proposed a model for dealing with seepage in
saturated and partially saturated soils which
indirectly incorporates changes in the degree
of saturation over time.
• They make use of the conventional transient
form of the continuity, expressing it as follows:
  2h  2h  h
k  2  2   Q  mw w
 x y  t
 Lam, Fredlund and Barbour model

• where
– Q = rate of flow into element from an external
source
– mw = slope of volumetric water content with
change in pore pressure u
– θ = volumetric water content, i.e., volume of
water per unit volume of soil.


mw 
u
 Lam, Fredlund and Barbour model

• The parameter θ is simply a measure of the

volume of water contained in the soil.
• This changes as water flows into or out of the
soil with a change in the pore pressure u and
is made up of two components:
1. Water that flows out as a result of compression
of the soil element
2. Water that flows out and is replaced by air
 Lam, Fredlund and Barbour model

• For fully saturated soils mw becomes identical

to the well-known parameter mv, the
coefficient of one-dimensional compressibility
of the soil.
• In practice, when analyzing partially saturated
soils, according to Lam et al. (1987), the
volume of water from compressibility of the
soil is very small compared with the volume
flowing out and being replaced by air.
 Lam, Fredlund and Barbour model

• The soils remain fully saturated until the pore

pressure becomes negative.
• Once the pore pressure becomes negative, the
possibility arises of air entering the soil.
• With sand this occurs relatively easily—water leaves
the void space and the volumetric water content falls
rapidly.
• As the particle size becomes smaller, it becomes
more difficult for air to enter the sample and the
volumetric water content no longer drops so rapidly.
 Terzaghi consolidation theory
• It is worth noting that the Terzaghi 1-D
equation is a simple case of transient flow and
is easily derived from Equation.
  2h  2h  h
k  2  2   Q  mw w
 x y  t

For one-dimensional flow in the vertical direction the x

term disappears.
Also there is no external source of water so Q also
disappears.
 Terzaghi consolidation theory
• This leaves:

h k  2h

t mw w y 2

which is essentially the Terzaghi equation, since h is

directly related to the pore pressure (u = ɣh).
The second soil parameter (in addition to the mw or θ
parameter) is the coefficient of permeability k (or
hydraulic conductivity as it is commonly called in
groundwater studies).
 Terzaghi consolidation theory
• The second soil parameter (in addition to the mw
or θ parameter) is the coefficient of permeability k.
• In a steady-state, fully saturated situation, k is
unlikely to change very much with stress level or
changes in pore pressure.
• However, with partially saturated soils, the
situation is quite different as the permeability
rapidly decreases as the degree of saturation falls.
Volumetric water content and hydraulic
conductivity versus pore pressure.
 Practical application
• The above procedure provides a solution for the value of the
head (h) in the soil, to which the pore pressure (u) is directly
related.
• The analysis incorporates the influence of partial saturation
by relating both the volumetric water content and
permeability to the pore pressure.
• These relationships are governed by the degree of saturation.
• This method of Lam et al. (1987) is incorporated into the
commercial seepage computer program Seep/W, which forms
part of a group of geotechnical programs known as
GeoStudio.
 Practical application
• With respect to the second behavior model
required, namely a way of taking account of
the influence of soil suction on the shear
strength of the soil, the work of Fredlund and
co-workers appears to be the best known, and
their approach is incorporated into the
Slope/W computer program, which is part of
GeoStudio.
 Fredlund & Rahardjoshear equation
• They proposed the following expression for shear strength:

  c '  ua  u w  tan  b    ua  tan  '

• where φb is the angle of cohesion intercept increase with

increasing suction.
• The eqn. provides a semiempirical means of taking account of
the influence of suction when the soil is not fully saturated.
• In effect, the frictional component of shear strength is being
divided into two components, one arising primarily from the
total stress and one from the soil suction.
• According to Fredlund and Rahardjo, the value of
φb is usually found to be between 15◦ and 20◦ but
theoretically could equal 45◦.
• It varies with degree of saturation and would be
45◦ at full saturation (i.e., the effective stress would
relate to the pore pressure in the usual way).
• The Fredlund expression seems less than
satisfactory from a theoretical viewpoint because
it implies that the increase in shear strength from
the negative pore pressure is a cohesive
contribution rather than a frictional component.