Analysis of Compressibility of Sensitive Soils

Sensitive soils, in general, are prone to mechanical disturbances while sampling, handling, and testing. This necessitates the prediction of true field behavior. The compressibility response of such soils is typical of having three zones, mechanistically explained as nonparticulate, transitional, and particulate. Such zoning has enabled the development of a simple method to predict the field compressibility response of the sample. The field compression curve with σct act as the most probable yield stress is considered to reflect 0% disturbance. By a comparison of experimentally determined σc and σct, it is possible to estimate the degree of sample disturbance. When the value of σc is closer to σct, the sampling disturbance approaches zero. As the value of σc reduces, the degree of sampling disturbance increases. The possibility of using this degree of sample disturbance from compressibility data to obtain other true properties from laboratory results of the sampled specimens has been examined.