Closure to “Experimental Study on Contact Erosion Failure in Pavement Embankment with Dispersive Clay” by S. Premkumar, J. Piratheepan, A. Arulrajah, M. Disfani, and P. Rajeev

It has been identified in the past that the electrolyte concentration of the eroding fluid plays an important role in dispersive erosion. Arulanandan et al. (1976) found that the erosion rate is inversely proportional to the salt concentration in the eroding fluid. Moreover, the strength of interparticle bond is found to be decreasing while the eroding water with lower salt concentration than the pore water is used (Muttuvel 2008). In addition, Arulanandan and Perry (1983) pointed out that the concentration of the eroding fluid may have a major influence on the soil erodibility and plotted the variation in erodibility of the saturated remolded soil with different eroding waters as shown in Fig. 1. This reveals that distilled water is highly likely to erode soils as a result of low electrolyte concentration. In addition, it has been found that the water with low ion concentration such as rain water is highly capable to erode dispersive soils (Bell and Walker 2000; Edgar 1991). - See more at: http://ascelibrary.org/doi/10.1061/%28ASCE%29MT.1943-5533.0001740#sthash.qprrzjpf.dpuf