Unified Plasticity Potential of Soils

Abstract

Soil plasticity characteristics are of great importance to practicing engineers and academics due to their wide range of applications mainly concerning settlement and soil strength assessment and volume change behavior. Therefore, assigning a plasticity value to soils under any discipline concerning soil engineering is critical. This is almost always carried out by determining plasticity index of soils in geotechnical engineering. However, overall plasticity characteristics of soils might not be reflected by using plasticity index alone. This research demonstrates the creation of a single model to define the plasticity potential of soils by using multivariate statistical techniques. Various soil properties including mineralogical features were integrated into the model. Some of these properties explained the soil plasticity positively and some of them negatively. The difference in plasticity characteristics of clayey soils were also identified. The model is created to be applied simply by using only two inputs for worldwide suitability. A single expression and two different scaled charts are proposed along with six ranges of plasticity potential for easy and broader application. This model proved that plasticity index alone needs refinement in practical applications.