Evaluating the Efficacy of Prediction Models to Estimate Swelling Potential of Oklahoma Soils

One of the most common methods to measure possible expansion of soil expansions is to perform one-dimensional swell test on undisturbed samples. Performing such tests, however, can be time-consuming and expensive for many projects. To address this issue, several studies have proposed different empirical models to predict the swelling potential of different types of soils. These models are based on basic soil properties and may be used to identify problematic expansive soils inexpensively. In the present study, nine predictive models were evaluated to demonstrate their efficacy in establishing correlations between the predicted and measured swell values of soils from multiple sites in Oklahoma. Differences between the measured and predicted values varied among the selected models indicating a need for further developments on this topic to combat swelling-induced damages of foundations, pavements, and other structures. The findings of this study are presented in this paper.