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Shrinkage Limit of Soil Mixtures

Article  in  Geotechnical Testing Journal · March 2000

DOI: 10.1520/GTJ11118J

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A. Sridharan1 and K. Prakash2

Shrinkage Limit of Soil Mixtures

REFERENCE: Sridharan, A. and Prakash, K., “Shrinkage Limit Of late, the shrinkage properties are assuming greater impor-
of Soil Mixtures,” Geotechnical Testing Journal, GTJODJ, Vol. tance as the soil is being used as backfill material in many in-
23, No. 1, March 2000, pp. 3–8.
stances, e.g. the nuclear fuel waste disposal systems. The backfill
material is often designed as soil mixtures primarily requiring low
ABSTRACT: Shrinkage limit, one of the Atterberg limits, is
widely linked with many plasticity-based soil behaviors. However,
shrinkage property along with other stringent requirements (Yong
in a great majority of these cases, such correlations have been found et al. 1986). Thus, further understanding of the mechanism con-
to exhibit poor performance. Recently, it has been brought out that trolling the shrinkage of soil mixtures leads to increasing the con-
the shrinkage limit of a natural soil does not depend upon plasticity fidence level before adopting the mechanism in the field. In this
characteristics, and it is primarily governed by the relative grain size context, this article gives an account of the experimental investiga-
distribution of the soil. The present study confirms this mechanism
with the results obtained using clay-clay, clay-non-cohesive soil, tion of the shrinkage property of soil mixtures, including non-co-
and non-cohesive soil mix systems. The present study gains impor- hesive soils. The outcome of this study will give insight into the de-
tance from the point of view of criteria with respect to the design of sign of soil mixtures used as backfill materials in various waste
back fill materials to be used in various applications, such as nuclear disposal projects in general and nuclear fuel waste disposal
waste disposal projects.
schemes in particular.
KEYWORDS: shrinkage limit, soil mixtures Experimental Program
The soils used in the present study can be grouped in to three se-
When a soil-water system traverses from liquid to solid state, ries:
three characteristics limiting water contents with well-defined and Series 1: clay-clay mixtures
unique mechanisms controlling them can be identified. The lowest Series 2: sand-clay mixtures
limiting water content is the shrinkage limit: the first two being the Series 3: non-cohesive soil mixtures
free-swell limit and the settling limit (Sridharan and Prakash Even though the shrinkage limit determination is done on minus
1998a). Sridharan and Prakash (1998b) have conducted a detailed 425 ␮m soil fractions, for conducting some of the confirmatory
study on the factors and mechanisms controlling the shrinkage tests, sand fractions of maximum size 2 mm were also used. The
limit of soils and have proposed the following hypothesis to ex- shrinkage limits of soils were determined by working the soils at
plain the mechanism governing the shrinkage limit of soils. about their liquid-limit water contents into shrinkage dishes
Shrinkage is a process of volume reduction that takes place due (ASTM designation D427-83 1989). In those cases where the liq-
to capillary pressures induced by the evaporation of water from the uid limit values were not available (i.e., non-cohesive soil mix-
soil. As the evaporation continues, the radius of the meniscus de- tures), the amount of water added was such that no segregation and
veloped in water in every pore where there is air-water interface liquefaction occurred during the sample preparation. The wet soil
continues to decrease, and the menisci will retreat into the soil mass pats were allowed to air dry and were then dried at a temperature of
until the shear stresses induced by the capillary pressures are equal- 40°C for 24 h and again at 110°C for 24 h.
ized by the shear strength at the particle level. The natural fine-
grained soils have sand, silt, and clay-size fractions in some pro- Results and Discussions
portions. During the shrinkage process, larger void spaces between
In the first series, the liquid limit, which is considered as one of
sand particles are filled with finer sand and silt particles, and
the plasticity characteristics of fine grained soils, is compared with
smaller void spaces between silt particles are filled by finer clay
the corresponding value of the shrinkage limit of clay-clay mix-
particles. Hence, relative grain size distribution plays a dominant
tures.
role.
Sridharan and Prakash (1998b) have shown that the shinkage
Clay-Clay Mixtures
process is a packing phenomenon and that the shrinkage limit of a
natural soil is primarily a function of the relative grain size distri- Table 1 gives the details of the fine-grained, clay soils used in the
bution of the soil, irrespective of the principal clay mineral of the preparation of clay-clay mixtures and sand-clay mixtures. Figure 1
soil and that the shrinkage limit does not depend on plasticity char- shows the grain size distribution curves for the same soils. Figure
acteristics of the soil. 2 presents the variation of liquid and shrinkage limits for different
1 proportions of two constituent soils forming the mix. If the shrink-
Honorary professor, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute of
Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India. age limit is a plasticity characteristic of a soil, then the shrinkage
2
Former research scholar, Department of Civil Engineering, Indian Institute limit is expected to decrease with the increase in the liquid limit of
of Science, Bangalore, 560 012, India. the mixture. However, it can be noted from Fig. 2 that even though
© 2000 by the American Society for Testing and Materials
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4 GEOTECHNICAL TESTING JOURNAL

TABLE 1—Details of the clayey soils used in the present study.

Grain Size Distribution, %

Liquid Plastic Shrinkage
Soil No. Soil Limit, % Limit, % Limit, % Clay Size Silt Size Sand Size Principal Clay Mineral(s)

01 Bentonite 393.4 50.1 13.7 65.5 34.5 zero Montmorillonite

02 Black cotton soil 90.8 44.0 09.4 62.5 37.5 zero Montmorillonite
03 Brown soil-1 64.6 26.6 14.5 40.0 41.6 18.4 Montmorillonite, Kaolinite
04 Red earth-1 38.6 18.0 14.7 40.5 23.9 35.6 Kaolinite

FIG. 1—Grain size distribution of cohesive soils.

the liquid limit increases from a minimum value to a maximum fine sand fraction the same, different sand-clay mixtures were pre-
value, the shrinkage limit first decreases and then starts increasing. pared and their shrinkage limits were determined. For the sake of
This indicates that the shrinkage limit is not a plasticity character- presentation, a term “mix ratio-1” (i.e., MR1) is defined herein as
istic. the ratio of fine sand content to the silt ⫹ clay (black cotton soil)
In the second series of the investigation, the results obtained content.
from the tests on sand-clay mixtures are analyzed. The non-cohe- Percentage fine sand content
MR1 ⫽ ᎏᎏᎏᎏ (1)
sive soils used in the second and final stages of tests included Percentage (silt ⫹ clay) content
washed and graded river sands, sand flour of predominantly silt
size (i.e., clay size fractions ⫽ 2%), and the rock flour (granite) of Figure 4a shows the variation of the shrinkage limit with MR1.
silt size (Table 2). The grain size distributions of these non-cohe- There is a decrease in the shrinkage limit with a decrease in the
sive soils are indicated in Figs. 3a and b. black cotton soil content up to a certain value. Below a certain lim-
ited black cotton soil content, the shrinkage limit shows an in-
Sand-Clay Mixtures creasing trend. It is important to observe that changing the internal
distribution of different-sized particles keeping the total fine sand
Two sand-clay mixtures were prepared and examined: (1) The content the same as that resulted in minimum shrinkage limit, has
minus 75-␮m fractions of the black cotton soil (Soil No. 2) were resulted in a considerable increase in the shrinkage limit (i.e.,
mixed with different proportions of fine sand fractions (Table 3). Points A and B in Fig. 4a). This highlights the importance of the
By conducting various trials, the percentage of the fine sand frac- relative grain size distribution in controlling the shrinkage limit of
tion to be added with the black cotton soil to achieve minimum soils.
shrinkage limit was found to be 12.4% (the proportions of different The bentonite clay was mixed with fine sand fraction (150 ␮m
sized sand particles composing the 12.4% fine sand were also ⱕ D ⱕ 212 ␮m) in different proportions. The shrinkage limits of
worked out likewise—Table 3). Keeping this ratio of the percent- these mixtures were determined (Table 4). Figure 4b shows the
age of the different-sized sand particles to the percentage of total variation of the shrinkage limit of bentonite-sand mixture

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 SRIDHARAN AND PRAKASH ON SOIL MIXTURES 5

with MR1, the trend of which is very similar to that indicated in Non-Cohesive Soil Mixtures
Fig. 4a.
These illustrations add to the argument in favor of a packing phe- The third series of confirmatory testing involves non-cohesive
nomenon controlling the shrinkage limit rather than the plasticity soil mixtures. Even though the conventional shrinkage limit test is
controlling it. done on soil fractions having minus 425 ␮m size, to verify the hy-
pothesis proposed to explain the mechanism governing the shrink-
age limit, medium sand (Soil Nos. 49 and 50) were also used. In or-
der to overcome practical difficulties in carrying out the shrinkage
limit test on only fine and medium sands, sand flour of predomi-
nantly silt size was also used in preparing the sand mixtures. Ut-
most care was exercised in conducting the tests so as to avoid pos-
sible segregation and liquefaction during testing. Different
non-cohesive soil mixtures prepared and studied are indicated in
Table 5. For the sake of convenience, a term “mix ratio-2” (i.e.,
MR2) is defined as

MR2 ⫽
Percentage of non-cohesive soil (0.425 mm ⬍ D ⬍2 mm) (2)
ᎏᎏᎏᎏᎏᎏ
Percentage of non-cohesive soil (D ⬍ 0.425 mm)
Shrinkage limits of mixtures for different values of MR2 (0 ⱕ MR2
ⱕ 1) were obtained and plotted as shown in Fig. 5. The observa-
tions made from the study of Fig. 5 and Table 5 are indicated be-
low.

1. When the soil is essentially silt sized with no sand sized par-
ticles, maximum shrinkage limit was obtained.
2. With the inclusion of medium and fine sand fractions, the rel-
ative grain size distribution gets improved, resulting in de-
creased shrinkage limit.
3. With proper proportioning of the non-cohesive soil fractions
in the mix, a lower shrinkage limit can be obtained which can
be even less than those obtained for cohesive soils (the mini-
mum value of 12.6% of the shrinkage limit so obtained is less
than that for highly plastic bentonite clay).
4. Any further increase in the proportion of the coarser fraction
results in an increase in the shrinkage limit.

Different combinations of non-cohesive soil fractions can be had

with the same value of mix ratio-2, resulting in different shrinkage
limits. Hence, the results listed in Table 5 are purely qualitative.
These results clearly rule out the possibility of considering the
shrinkage limit as one of the plasticity characteristics of a soil. In-
FIG. 2—Variation of the liquid and shrinkage limits with the percentage stead, they highlight the validity of the hypothesis that explains the
of soil in the clay-clay mix: (a) bentonite and brown soil-1 mix; (b) brown shrinkage limit based on the relative grain size distribution of the
soil-1 and red earth-1 mix. soil.

TABLE 2—Properties of the non-cohesive soils used.

Liquid Shrinkage
Soil No. Soil Size Limit, % Limit, % D10, mm D30, mm D60, mm Cu Cc

49 Medium sand-1 1.180 mm ⬍ D ⬍2.000 mm … – 1.24 1.380 1.600 1.290 0.960

50 Medium sand-2 0.425 mm ⬍ D ⬍1.180 mm … – 0.480 0.600 0.760 1.583 0.987
51 Fine sand-1 0.075 mm ⬍ D ⬍0.425 mm … – 0.205 0.245 0.310 1.512 0.945
52 Fine sand-2 0.212 mm ⬍ D ⬍0.425 mm 30.5 – 0.212 0.222 0.270 1.274 0.861
53 Fine sand-3 0.150 mm ⬍ D ⬍0.212 mm 33.2 – 0.154 0.162 0.177 0.149 0.963
54 Fine sand-4 0.075 mm ⬍ D ⬍0.150 mm 35.9 – 0.076 0.080 0.098 1.289 0.859
55 Sand flour D ⬍ 0.075 mm 31.4 26.6 0.0086 0.024 0.047 5.465 1.425
56 Rock flour D ⬍ 0.075 mm 39.4 32.6 0.0205 0.0348 0.052 2.537 1.136

* obtained by core penetration method.

Cu ⫽ coefficient of uniformity.
Cc ⫽ coefficient of curvature.

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 A
FIG. 3a—Grain-size distribution of non-cohesive soils.

B
FIG. 3b—Grain-size distribution of non-cohesive soils.

TABLE 3—Details of tests conducted on black cotton soil–sand mixtures.

Proportion of Black
Cotton Soil
(Combining Silt and
Clay Size Fraction
Only) and Sand Size
Particles in the Mix, % Split up proportion in c, %

Soil No. c* d** (0.425 mm–0.212 mm) (0.212 mm–0.150 mm) (0.150 mm–0.075 mm) MR1 ⫽ c/d Ws, %

02 00 100 – – – 00 09.4
57 12.4 87.6 05.25 2.25 04.9 0.142 08.7
58 12.4 87.6 08.00 3.00 01.4 0.142 11.6
59 25.0 75.0 10.585 4.536 09.879 0.333 10.8
60 50.0 50.0 21.169 9.073 19.758 1.000 15.3

* c ⫽ Fine sand (combination of soils 52, 53, and 54 of Table 2).

** d ⫽ Black cotton soil (Soil No. 2 of Table 1).
NOTE: The ratio of percentage of the soils 52, 53, 54 constituting c for soils 57, 59, and 60 to the percentage of c is the same.

6
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 SRIDHARAN AND PRAKASH ON SOIL MIXTURES 7

Effect of Angularity of Soil Grains

The most common shape of clay size particles is platy and most
of the particles in the range of silt size and coarser are approxi-
mately equi-dimensional. The study of the effect of the shape of
clay size particles on the shrinkage limit is very complex. However,
the effect of shape of particles in the range of silt size and coarser
on the shrinkage limit can be studied. The lesser the angularity, the
denser will be the packing of the particles and lower will be the
shrinkage limit expected.
Two soils of silt-size particles, equi-dimensional in shape, were
used in the present work. One is crushed river sand (i.e., sand
flour—Soil No. 55) and the other is the crushed granite (i.e., rock
flour—Soil No. 56). The particles of the sand flour are relatively
more rounded than those of rock flour. Hence the shrinkage limit of
sand flour is expected to be less than that of rock flour. The exper-
imental results indicate that the shrinkage limit of the sand flour is
26.6% while that of rock flour is 32.6%. This trend is as expected
since rock flour has higher frictional properties at the particle level
and, hence, lesser shrinkage. So, if two natural soils have identical
grain size distribution, the one that has higher shearing resistance
at the particle level will have higher shrinkage limit than that of the
other whose shear resistance at the particle level is lesser. In other-
words, the shearing resistance at the particle level also governs the
shrinkage limit (Sridharan and Venkatappa Rao 1971).

TABLE 4—Details of the tests conducted on bentonite-sand mixtures.

Proportion of (Clay⫹Silt)
Size and Sand Size
Particles in the Mix* (%)

Soil No. c d MR1 ⫽ c/d ws (%)

01 00 100 00 13.7
61 25 75 0.333 11.8
62 50 50 1.000 25.2
63 75 25 3.000 32.0
64 85 15 5.667 35.2

* c : Fine sand (Soil No. 53 of Table 2).

d : Bentonite (Soil No. 1 of Table 1).
FIG. 4—Variation of shrinkage limit of clay-sand mixture with the mix
ratio-1: (a) Black cotton soil and sand mixtures; (b) Bentonite and sand
mixtures.
TABLE 5—Details of the non-cohesive soil mixtures studied.

Proportion of sands in the mix (%)

Soil
Number a* b† c$ d# f ⫽ (a ⫹ b) (%) g ⫽ (c ⫹ d) (%) MR2 ⫽ f/g w%

55 0 0 0 100 0 100 0 26.6

65 9 11 23 57 20 80 0.250 15.8
66 11 13 26 50 24 76 0.316 16.5
67 13 15 26 46 28 72 0.389 16.0
68 15 17 26 42 32 68 0.471 14.2
69 16 18 25 41 34 66 0.515 14.6
70 17 19 24 40 36 64 0.563 13.5
71 17 19 26 38 36 64 0.563 13.3
72 18 20 26 36 38 62 0.613 12.9
73 19 21 25 35 40 60 0.666 12.6
74 19 21 26 34 40 60 0.666 12.6
75 20 22 24 34 42 58 0.724 12.7
76 21 23 23 33 44 56 0.786 12.8
77 24 26 18 32 50 50 1.000 13.0

* a ⫽ size range: 1.180 mm ⬍D ⬍2 mm (Soil No. 49) $

c ⫽ size range: 0.075 mm ⬍D ⬍0.425 mm (Soil No. 51)
† b ⫽ size range: 0.425 mm ⬍D ⬍1.18 mm (Soil No. 50) #
d ⫽ size range: D ⬍0.075 (Soil No. 55)

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8 GEOTECHNICAL TESTING JOURNAL

FIG. 5—Variation of shrinkage limit of non-cohesive soil mixtures with mix ratio-2.

Conclusions References
The results obtained from extensive testing program conducted ASTM designation: D427-83 (1989), Standard Method for Shrink-
on cohesive soil mixtures, cohesive-non-cohesive soil mixtures age Factors of Soils, Annual Book of ASTM Standards, Vol.
and non-cohesive soil mixtures prepared in the laboratory, high- 4.08, ASTM, West Conshohocken, PA.
light the following facts.
Sridharan, A. and Prakash, K., 1998a, “Characteristic Water Con-
1. The shrinkage limit of a soil is not a plasticity characteristic tents of Fine Grained Soil-Water System,” Geotechnique, Vol.
of the soil. 48, No. 3, pp. 337–346.
2. The shrinkage limit of a soil is the result of packing phe- Sridharan, A. and Prakash, K. (1998b), “Mechanism Controlling
nomenon and is primarily controlled by the relative grain size the Shrinkage Limit of Soils,” Geotechnical Testing Journal,
distribution of the soil. GTJO DJ, Vol. 21, No. 3, pp. 240–250.
3. For the systems having the same grain size distribution, the Sridharan, A. and Vekatappa Rao, G, 1971, “Effective Stress The-
one which has higher shearing resistance at the particle level ory of Shrinkage Phenomena,” Canadian Geotechnical Journal,
will shrink less. Vol. 8, No. 4, pp. 503–513.
These observations enchance the ability to design most effec- Yong, R. N., Boonsinsuk, P., and Wong, G., (1986), “Formulation
tively and efficiently the soil mixtures as the back fill materials to of Back Fill Material for a Nuclear Fuel Waste Disposal Vault,”
meet various functional requirements. Canadian Geotechnical Journal, Vol. 23, pp. 216–228.

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