Soil Mechanics

Lecture 4 – Clay Mineralogy

By
Dr. Gaurav Tiwari
Assistant Professor
Civil Engineering Department, IIT Kanpur

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 Introduction
⮚What is the First Thought comes to your mind when you hear:
▪ Sand: Most probably a sea beach where the soil is difficult to mould in different shapes and we can dust it off from
our hands easily
▪ Clay: Most probably a soil which can be moulded in different shapes (you can think of some clay toy) and with the
reducing water content it becomes solid and hard (like brittle material).

Sea beach sand Pottery from clay

⮚ What is the underlying reason?
▪ Is it particle size?

▪ Answer is No
▪ Answer is mineralogy 2
 Clay Mineralogy

⮚ Two building units involved in the formation of clay minerals are:

▪ Tetrahedral unit: Four oxygen atom nestled around a silicon to form an unit
▪ Octahedral unit: Six hydroxyl ions nestling around a Magnesium or Aluminium atom

Tetrahedral unit Octahedral unit with Mg Octahedral unit with Al

⮚ Both units are not electrically neutral and hence cannot exist as isolated units
⮚ Sheets of octahedral units are however electrically neutral and hence can exist in nature

Silica Sheet Gibbsite Sheet Brucite Sheet

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 Clay Mineralogy
⮚ Symbolic representation of these sheets are shown below:

G B

⮚ Combination of these sheets in different arrangements lead to the formation of different clay minerals
⮚ Most common clay minerals are shown below

Kaolite (strongest bond) Montmorillonite (weakest bond) Illite (Intermediate bond)

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 Clay Mineralogy – 3D Visualisation

a) Silica tetrahedron; (b) silica sheet; (c) alumina Structure of Illite

octahedron; (d) octahedral (gibbsite) sheet
Clay Mineralogy - Summary

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 Clay Mineralogy – Shape and Features
▪ Under the magnified view, clay particles look platy, or needle shaped due to their mineralogy as shown below.

Clay particle shape

▪ Surfaces of clay mineral particles carry residual negative charges, mainly due to isomorphous substitution
▪ Isomorphous substitution: Substitution of one kind of atom for another. If an ion of lower vacancy replaces an ion with higher valency,
there will be a deficiency of net unit charge and distortion of crystal lattice (shown below).
▪ Finally, the clay particles are negatively charged over the surface and carry positive charges at the edges.
▪ Since, the magnitude of the electrical charge is directly related to the surface area, the influence of this charge on the behaviour of the
particle relative to the influence of mass forces (i.e., weight of particle) will be directly related to the surface area per mass of particles
known as specific surface. It is a good indicator of the relative influence of electrical forces.
▪ The smaller the particle size (clay has the smallest particle), more the specific surface, more the role of surface forces due to charge.

Length of particle Surface area

Clay Particle

Example of Isomorphous substitution Charge over clay particle

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Clay Mineralogy – Shape and Features

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 Clay Particle-Water Interaction
▪ In dry clay, the negative charge is balanced by weakly held exchangeable cations (can be readily replaced by other ions)
like Ca+2, Mg+2, Na+, and K+ surrounding the particles being held by electrostatic attraction.
▪ When water is added to clay, these cations and a few anions float around the clay particles. This configuration is
referred to as a diffuse double layer.
▪ The cation concentration decreases with the distance from the surface of the particle.
 Clay Particle-Water Interaction

+
+
+
-

-
-
-

+ + + +
+

Dipole attraction Cation attraction Hydrogen bond

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 Clay Particle-Water Interaction
▪ Approximate dimensions of the absorbed water and double layer
 Differences- Soil Particles
⮚ The most pronounced characteristic of the clay is their ability to deform plastically without cracking when mixed
with varying amounts of water. Reason can be summarised as:
▪ Clay particles are formed by chemical weathering. Chemical weathering results in the formation of group of
crystalline particles of colloidal size (<0.002 mm) known as clay minerals.
▪ These clay mineral particles have a net electrical charge over their surface.
▪ Further, their Surface Area to Mass ratio (known as specific surface) is very high
▪ Water forms a viscous double diffused layer around clay particles
▪ This allows grains to move across one another supported by the viscous interlayers of the film
▪ Thus, allowing clay to deform plastically without cracking

⮚ Gravels are pieces of rocks with occasional particles of quartz, feldspar, and other minerals. Sand particles are made
of mostly quartz and feldspar. Silts are the microscopic soil fractions that consist of very fine quartz grains and some
flake-shaped particles that are fragments of micaceous minerals
⮚ Physical weathering reduces boulders to cobbles, cobbles to gravel, gravel to sand, sand to silt and silt to rock dust.
▪ Particles of rock minerals are electrically neutral and mostly bulky.
▪ There is no mechanism to make them stick to each other or anything else.
Shape of Bulky
grains

Angular Sub-Angular Sub-Rounded Rounded Well-Rounded 12

 Soil Fabric - Clays
⮚ During deposition, the mineral particles are arranged into structural frameworks that we call soil fabric
⮚ Forces of repulsion and attraction act between adjacent clay mineral particles.
⮚ Repulsion occurs between like charges of the double layers, the force of repulsion depending on the characteristics of
the layers.
⮚ An increase in cation valency or concentration will result in a decrease in repulsive force and vice versa.
⮚ Attraction between particles is due to short-range van der Waals forces (electrical forces of attraction between neutral
molecules), which are independent of the double-layer characteristics, that decrease rapidly with increasing distance
between particles.
⮚ The net interparticle forces influence the structural form of clay mineral particles on deposition.
⮚ If there is net repulsion the particles tend to assume a face-to-face orientation, this being referred to as a dispersed
structure.
⮚ If, on the other hand, there is net attraction the orientation of the particles tends to be edge-to-face or edge-to-edge,
this being referred to as a flocculated structure.
⮚ In particular, the electrochemical environment has the greatest influence on the kind of soil fabric that is formed
during deposition of fine-grained soils

Face-to-Face (Dispersed) Face-to-Edge (Flocculated) 13

 Soil Fabric – Granular soils
⮚ Behaviour of these particles are dominated by gravitational forces instead of surface forces
⮚ These particles arrange in such a form where the volume of voids exceeds the volume of solids
⮚ Large variation in void ratio is possible depending on the grain size distribution and the arrangement of grains
⮚ These arrangement of grains could be broadly classified as: loose and dense.

⮚ The void ratio corresponding to the loosest possible condition of a granular soil: maximum void ratio (emax). This is
obtained in the laboratory by pouring dry sand slowly in a mould and avoiding vibration.

⮚ The void ratio corresponding to the densest possible condition of a granular soil: minimum void ratio (emin). This is
obtained in the laboratory by pouring dry sand slowly in a mould and vibrating it.

⮚ Denseness of soil deposit is quantified in terms of relative density (Dr):

⮚ or,

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Soil Fabric – Granular soils

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Thank you

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