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Abstract:
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Expansive clays are located world wide and cause billions of dollars in damage each year . Currently , the expansion is usually estimated using correlations instead of direct testing as direct testing is expensive and often takes over a month to complete . The purpose of this study was to determine if centrifuge technology could be used to characterize expansive clays through direct testing .
Testing was performed in an centrifuge permeameter on compacted specimens of Eagle Ford clay . A framework was developed to analyze effective stresses in centrifuge samples and methods were proposed to determine the swell -stress curve of a soil from centrifuge tests . Standard free swell test were also performed for comparison .
The swell -stress curve determined by centrifuge testing was found to match with the curve found from free swell tests after correcting for differences in testing procedures . The centrifuge tests were found to be repeatable and required several days for testing rather than weeks . |