Ng, C. W. W. et al. (2016) Géotechnique Letters 6, 1–7, http://dx.doi.org/10.1680/jgele.16.

00059

Volume changes of an unsaturated clay during heating and cooling

C. W. W. NG*, Q. CHENG*, C. ZHOU* and E. E. ALONSO{

Thermally induced soil volume changes can have significant influence on many geotechnical
structures. So far, research on thermal volume changes of unsaturated soil is very limited,
particularly at temperatures lower than typical room temperature (23°C). The principal objective of
this study is to investigate the volumetric behaviour of normally consolidated intact and recompacted
low-plasticity clay specimens (loess soil) over a wide thermal cycle ranging from 5 to 53°C using a
modified double-cell triaxial apparatus. It is found that contractive volumetric strain increases as the
temperature increases. During the cooling process, soil volume keeps contracting until the
temperature decreases to 5°C. Different from previous studies in the literature on saturated
remoulded illite and natural silty clay, a plastic contraction at a much higher rate is observed from
13 to 5°C for both recompacted and intact loess specimens. The plastic volume changes during
cooling are probably because cooling-induced contraction of soil particles leads to particle
rearrangements in loess. Moreover, the cooling-induced plastic volume change, which only occurs
when the cooling temperature is less than a critical value (13°C for the test conditions considered in
this study), cannot be captured by the existing thermo-mechanical models, which predict elastic
contraction during cooling. A new yield surface (temperature decrease) is proposed to simulate the
observed elastoplastic behaviour during cooling.

KEYWORDS: partial saturation; suction; temperature effects

ICE Publishing: all rights reserved

INTRODUCTION TEST PROGRAMME AND TEST APPARATUS

Thermally induced volumetric behaviour of soils can have a
significant influence in many geotechnical engineering prob-
lems such as the landfill cover system, pipeline engineering,
geothermal energy development and pavement engineering
(Gens, 2010). To investigate the effects of temperature change
on soil volume, many efforts have been made on saturated
soils (Campanella & Mitchell, 1968; Towhata et al., 1993;
Burghignoli et al., 2000; Delage et al., 2000; Sultan et al.,
2002; Abuel-Naga et al., 2007; Di Donna & Laloui, 2015)
and unsaturated soils (Romero et al., 2003; Tang et al., 2008;
Uchaipichat & Khalili, 2009; Zhou et al., 2015; Coccia &
McCartney, 2016). However, most of the research has paid
more attention to temperatures higher than typical room
temperature (23°C). Moreover, in previous studies, all the
temperature cycles were applied on the drying path and
the influence of wetting was neglected. Few of the previous
research considered effects of soil structure (intact and
recompacted) on the thermally induced volumetric behav-
iour of unsaturated soils.
In this study, a new suction- and temperature-controlled
double-cell triaxial apparatus is developed. Four tests were
carried out to study the volumetric behaviour of both intact
and recompacted soil specimens at 0 and 100 kPa suction
during a heating and cooling cycle using this modified
system. The temperature ranges covered vary from 5 to 53°C.
Manuscript received 27 April 2016; first decision 24 June 2016;
accepted 24 June 2016.
Published online at www.geotechniqueletters.com on 6 July
2016.
*Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, Clear Water Bay,
Kowloon, Hong Kong
{Department of Geotechnical Engineering and Geosciences,
Universitat Politècnica de Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain
The principal objective of this research is to study volume
changes of intact and recompacted low-plasticity clay
specimens (loess soil) under heating and cooling in awide tem-
perature range of 5–53°C. Four suction- and temperature-
controlled heating and cooling tests were carried out. Two of
them (R0 and R100) were carried out on recompacted
specimens, but at different suctions (0 and 100 kPa). The
other two (I0 and I100) were carried out on intact specimens at
suctions of 0 and 100 kPa. Details of the test programme are
summarised in Table 1. To interpret the effects of soil structure,
a scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used to investigate
the microstructure of intact and recompacted specimens.
To control suction and temperature independently in un-
saturated soils, a double-cell triaxial apparatus (Ng et al.,
2012) was modified by adding a temperature control system.
Figure 1 shows a schematic diagram of the newly developed
apparatus. The temperature control system includes a
heating/cooling bath (manufacturer: Polyscience; model:
AD07R-20) connected with a spiral copper tube installed
between the inner cell and the outer cell. The heating/cooling
bath mainly consists of a digital controller which is able
to adjust the output of the heating/cooling unit according
to current and target temperatures, a thermostat, a heating/
cooling unit, a water bath, an inbuilt pump and a thermo-
couple. To monitor the temperature, a thermocouple is
installed within the water of the inner cell to give feedback to
the thermostat and the advanced digital controller. This will
then automatically adjust the output of the heating/cooling
unit according to the target temperature. Furthermore, a
thermal insulating material is used to wrap the whole triaxial
apparatus to minimise any heat loss and exchange with the
surroundings. In this study, soil temperature reaches the
target temperature within 6 h. After reaching equilibrium,
the temperature fluctuation is <0·2°C.
The axis translation technique (Hilf, 1956) is used to
control the matrix suction (ua − uw) in the soil specimen,

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 2 Ng, Cheng, Zhou and Alonso
Table 1. Details of the experimental programme

Test ID Specimen type Suction: kPa Temperature: °C Void ratio

Initial After wetting

R0 Recompacted 0 23 ! 33 ! 43 ! 53 ! 43 ! 33 ! 23 ! 13 ! 5 ! 13 ! 23 1·17 0·86
R100 Recompacted 100 1·17 0·97
I0 Intact 0 1·15 0·93
I100 Intact 100 1·17 1·01

Dial gauge

Apply cell pressure

Thermostat

Pump

Bath
Outer cell
Heating/cooling unit
Loading rod
Reference tube

Thermocouple Inner cell

Spiral copper tube
Top cap
Porous stone
Soil specimen
Ceramic disk Burette

Pedestal (1) The loading rod is

used to apply the deviatoric
stress.
(2) In this study, the loading rod
was not used because only
Air pressure line Ballast tube confining pressure was applied.
Differential pressure
transducer
(a)

(b)

Fig. 1. Schematic diagram of the suction- and temperature-controlled double-cell triaxial apparatus

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 Volume changes of an unsaturated clay during heating and cooling 3
where ua and uw are the pore-air pressure and the pore-water Table 2. Index properties of low-plasticity clay
pressure, respectively. The total volume change of the speci-
men is measured by monitoring the change in the differential Property Value
pressure between the water level inside the inner cell and that Specific gravity 2·69
in the reference tube with a differential pressure transducer Sand content: % 0·1
(DPT). During a test, a change in water level of the inner cell Silt content: % 71·9
takes place only within the bottle neck, with a small Clay content: % 28·0
diameter of 20 mm (Ng et al., 2002). After calibration, the Liquid limit: % 36
accuracy of the DPT is found to be within 0·1 mm. For the Plastic limit: % 19
specimen size used in this research, 76 mm in diameter and Plasticity index: % 17
20 mm in height, this accuracy corresponds to a volumetric
strain of about 0·03%. The water flow in and out of the soil
specimen is measured by a burette together with an air trap
Each specimen, 76 mm in diameter and 20 mm in height,
and a ballast tube. The equilibrium state can be considered
was statically compacted in three layers. The compaction
to be attained when the water flow rate is <0·1 ml/day, which
water content and void ratio were 10·9% and 1·17, respec-
is equivalent to a rate of 0·09%/day in gravimetric water
tively. These properties are set to be the same as the initial
content. More details of the measurement of total and water
state of the intact specimens for later comparison.
volume change were reported by Ng et al. (2012).
In each suction- and temperature-controlled test, the
thermally induced volumetric strain of soil specimen is
calculated using the following equation. TEST PROCEDURES
Figure 2 shows the thermo-mechanical paths of the soil
εv ðT Þ ¼ ðΔVm ðT Þ
ΔVa ðT Þ
μtÞ=V ð1Þ specimens. Each test consists of three stages: isotropic
compression, wetting and thermal cycle. After the specimen
where εv(T ) is the thermally induced volumetric strain
is set up in the triaxial apparatus, the initial state of each
(positive for contraction); ΔVm(T ) is the gross volumetric
specimen was fixed at point A (or A′). For intact and
contraction measured by the DPT; ΔVa(T ) is the thermal
recompacted specimens, the initial suction is about 200 and
contraction of volume change measurement system, includ-
180 kPa, respectively. In Fig. 2, the initial state of intact
ing the inner cell, ceramic disc, top cap, membrane, water
and recompacted specimens is denoted by points A and A′,
in the inner cell and drainage tubes; μ is the rate of water
respectively. Each specimen was first isotropically com-
diffusion through the membrane and drainage tubes at a
pressed to a net confining stress of 50 kPa (A ! B) at
given pressure and temperature condition; t is the test dur-
drained condition. The next stage was to apply the target
ation; V is the volume of the specimen. Rigorous calibration
suction. In tests R100 and I100, soil specimens were wetted
was carried out to measure accurately each term on the
to 100 kPa (B ! C1). Similarly, soil specimens in tests R0
right-hand side of equation (1). To determine the first term
and I0 were wetted to 0 kPa (B ! C2). The suction
ΔVm(T ), the relationship between the DPT output voltage
equilibrium was considered to be completed when the rate
and the water level inside the inner cell was calibrated at
of water content change was smaller than 0·09%/day (Chiu
different pressures and temperatures. At each pressure and
& Ng, 2012). At least 7–10 days were required to reach
temperature condition, the water level inside the inner cell
equilibrium condition. For all specimens tested in this study,
was controlled and the amount of inflow/outflow water was
a contractive strain of more than 10% was measured during
measured by a high accuracy (0·01 g) balance. More details
the stages of isotropic compression and wetting, as shown in
of the procedures were reported by Ng et al. (2002). More
Table 1. It is reasonable to assume that all specimens are
importantly, great care was taken to calibrate the thermal
normally consolidated prior to heating. Then, the third stage
responses of the apparatus (i.e. the second term ΔVa(T )).
was to change the temperature step by step (the change of the
During the calibration, a rigid dummy specimen with a
soil temperature is about 10°C in each step). The heating
known thermal expansion coefficient was set up in the tri-
axial cell. After that, a thermal cycle ranging from 5 to 53°C
(same as the temperature range adopted in each test) was
applied to the dummy specimen and apparatus. Finally, the
third term μt at different pressures and temperatures were
determined using the method suggested by Cekerevac et al. 200
A
(2005). After calibration, the accuracy of the volumetric 180
strain measurement is found to be 0·03%. A'
B
B'
SOIL TYPE AND SPECIMEN PREPARATION 100 D1
The material tested in this paper is loess from the Shaanxi
Province of China and is an aeolian sediment. The physical s: kPa
C1
properties are summarised in Table 2 and some other
properties, such as the water retention behaviour, were F1
reported by Sadeghi et al. (2016). According to the unified 0
E1 53 D2
soil classification system (ASTM, 2006), the test soil is
classified as a clay of low plasticity. 0
Intact block loess samples were manually extracted using 23 C2
wooden cubic boxes, with a length of 300 mm and a depth of p: kPa F2
3·5 m. The cutter ring with 76 mm diameter and 20 mm 5 T: °C
height was used to obtain the intact specimens. The initial 50 E2
void ratio is 1·17 while the initial suction is 200 ± 20 kPa.
For recompacted specimens, static compaction is adopted. Fig. 2. Thermo-mechanical path of each specimen

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 4 Ng, Cheng, Zhou and Alonso
process was from typical room temperature (about 23°C)
to 53°C (C1 ! D1, C2 ! D2), followed by cooling to 5°C
(D1 ! E1, D2 ! E2) and reheating to room temperature
(E1 ! F1, E2 ! F2). Each step lasted for 24 h in order to
achieve thermal equilibrium.
INTERPRETATION OF EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
Typical thermally induced volumetric behaviour
Figure 3(a) shows the volumetric behaviour of recompacted
soil during heating and cooling at two different suctions of
0 and 100 kPa. During the heating process, the contractive
volumetric strain increases with increasing temperature,
at an increasing rate. This is probably because the heating-
induced expansion of soil particles triggered particle
rearrangement and facilitated plastic contraction. These
observations can be explained using elastoplastic theory, as
shown in Fig. 4(a). According to the previous research (Tang
et al., 2008), preconsolidation pressure decreases as temp-
erature increases. When temperature increases until the yield
curve is touched, plastic volumetric contractive strain from
point 0 to point 1 could be observed and the yield curve
would shift to the right.
When temperature decreases from 53 to 13°C, the con-
tractive volumetric strain keeps increasing, but at a much
slower rate of around 2 × 10−3%/°C. This process is within
the yield surface, which means it is an elastic deformation
due to thermal contraction of soil particles and the slope
between point 1 and point 2, as shown in Fig. 4(a), is close
to the thermal expansion coefficient of soil particles (for clay
particles is 2·9 × 10−3%/°C, Horseman & McEwen, 1996).
When temperature keeps decreasing, from 13 to 5°C, a
plastic contractive volumetric strain at a larger rate of
2·5 × 10−2%/°C can be observed, as shown in Fig. 3(a). It
should be pointed out that this observation is different from
previous studies on saturated soil. Campanella & Mitchell
(1968) and Di Donna & Laloui (2015) measured the volume
changes of remoulded illite and natural silty clay during
cooling at temperatures in the range from 5 to 60°C. For
both soils, only elastic volume changes were observed during
cooling. The discrepancy between this study and the two
previous studies (Campanella & Mitchell, 1968; Di Donna
& Laloui, 2015) may be because the void ratio of loess speci-
men is about 20 and 60% larger than those of the remoulded
illite and natural silty clay specimens, respectively. Given a
much larger void ratio, some large voids of loess are unstable
and can be destroyed by cooling-induced particle contrac-
tion. Consequently, cooling may induce particle rearrange-
ment and plastic contraction in the loess specimen. On
the contrary, the structure of the remoulded illite and natural
silty clay specimens is expected to be more stable. The
cooling-induced responses of the remoulded illite and the
natural silty clay specimens would be essentially elastic
L oading yield curve
T
1
(initial)(final)

R0 R100
0·2
Volumetric strain: %

0·4 4
0
Pc
0·6
2 (initial)
0·8
3 (final)
1
‘Temperature decrease’ yield limit
1·2
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 (a)
Temperature: °C
εv
(a)

0 3

0·2 I0 I100
4
Volumetric strain: %

0·4 2
1
0·6

0·8

1 (final) (initial)

0 T
1·2
0 10 20 30 40 50 60
Temperature: °C
(b) ‘Temperature decrease’ yield limit

Fig. 3. Suction effects on volume change of unsaturated soil (b)

during heating and cooling: (a) recompacted specimen and
(b) intact specimen Fig. 4. Postulation of the ‘TD’ yield limit

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 Volume changes of an unsaturated clay during heating and cooling
with minimum particle rearrangement. It should be pointed
out that through temperature-controlled oedometer tests
on saturated soft Bangkok clay, Abuel-Naga et al. (2007)
observed that preconsolidation pressure and void ratio show
negligible effects on the thermal strain of soil specimen at
a given over consolidated ratio. Their tests focused on the
heating process, with a variation of void ratio <15% only.
Recently, Ng et al. (2016) investigated thermal volume
changes of saturated loose and dense sand specimens using
a temperature-controlled triaxial cell. They found that under
thermal cycles, loose specimen with a relative compaction of
20% show plastic strain and the response of dense specimen
with a relative compaction of 90% is almost elastic. It is
expected that soil specimens show different responses when
there is a wide variation of void ratios. To fully understand
the influence of void ratio on the thermal volume change,
further study may be needed.
Furthermore, the observed contraction during cooling
cannot be predicted by using the existing elastoplastic
theory, which predicts elastic contraction during cooling.
A new ‘temperature decrease, TD’ yield limit is introduced
into the existing elastoplastic thermo-mechanical models
(e.g. Zhou & Ng, 2015) to simulate the observed elasto-
plastic behaviour during cooling, as shown in Fig. 4(b).
When temperature decreases to a critical value, the cooling-
induced contraction of soil particle causes irreversible
particle rearrangement. This critical temperature is rep-
resented by the TD yield surface, as illustrated in Fig. 4(b).
When soil state reaches the TD yield surface, soil response
under continuous cooling is elastoplastic. The volumetric
contraction during cooling beyond the TD line is substan-
tially less in magnitude than the thermal volumetric con-
traction observed during heating beyond the loading yield
curve. It should be noted that the lowest temperature experi-
enced by each recompacted specimen was the ambient
temperature (i.e. 20°C). During the cooling process, each
recompacted specimen exhibited an elastoplastic behaviour
5
(Romero et al., 2003). In their study, the volume change at
60 kPa was 30% larger than that at 200 kPa with the same
change of temperature. The differences between this study
and the study of Romero et al. (2003) are mainly due to
different responses during the wetting before heating. For the
Boom clay in their study, the preconsolidation was larger at a
higher suction (suction hardening) and swelling was observed
during wetting. For unsaturated loess in this study, substantial
volumetric contraction (about 17, 25, 13 and 19% for R100,
R0, I100 and I0, respectively) was recorded during wetting.
With a larger suction, the void ratio after wetting is larger.
Effects of suction-induced hardening are compensated by the
effects of strain hardening induced by wetting collapse.
At both suctions (i.e. 0 and 100 kPa) considered in
this study, an increase in soil temperature induces vol-
umetric contraction. At a high suction range (>100 MPa),
only heating-induced expansion was observed by previous
researchers (Tang et al., 2008; Alsherif & McCartney, 2015).
The two different thermal responses of unsaturated soils may
be attributed to a significant increase in soil preconsolidation
pressure when a high suction was applied (Alonso et al.,
1990). Given a larger preconsolidation pressure induced,
soil state would be within the yield surface during the
heating, leading to an essentially elastic thermal expansion
of soil particles.
Effects of soil structures on volume changes during
heating and cooling
Figure 5(a) shows the volumetric behaviour of intact and
recompacted soils at a suction of 0 kPa. It can be seen from
0
R0 I0
0·2
Volumetric strain: %

only when the soil temperature was <13°C. It may be 0·4

postulated that the yielding temperature could be slightly
smaller than the ambient temperature. This observation 0·6
suggests that the mechanical and thermal soil behaviours are
coupled. In this study, large volumetric contractions (larger 0·8
than 0·5%), leading to stiffening of the soil skeleton, were
observed before cooling. During subsequent cooling, a lower 1
temperature would be required to induce further particle
rearrangement and plastic strain. 1·2
For the thermally induced volume change of intact 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
specimens, as shown in Fig. 3(b), the trend is qualitatively Temperature: °C
similar to that of the recompacted specimen. The differences (a)
between intact and recompacted specimens are analysed in 0
the section ‘Effects of soil structures on volume changes
during heating and cooling’. As illustrated in Fig. 3, the R100 I100
0·2
obtained trends of soil behaviour under thermal loads are
the same among the four tests. This consistency suggests that
Volumetric strain: %

the new laboratory data is limited but reliable. However, it 0·4

should be pointed out that the above observations and
discussion should be treated with caution since they may be 0·6
specific and only applicable to a particular soil type and
certain temperature range. 0·8

1
Suction effects on volume changes during heating
and cooling 1·2
As shown in Fig. 3, for both intact and recompacted 0 10 20 30 40 50 60
specimens, the cumulative thermal volume changes at zero Temperature: °C
suction are larger than that at suction of 100 kPa. The (b)
difference, which varies with temperature in the range of
0–20%, is about 5% on average. This value is much less Fig. 5. Effects of soil structure on volume change of unsaturated
significant compared with the suction effects on Boom clay soil during heating and cooling: (a) s = 0 kPa and (b) s = 100 kPa

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 6 Ng, Cheng, Zhou and Alonso
Large void
(a)
(b)
Fig. 6. SEM images of: (a) intact specimen and (b) recompacted
specimen
this figure that the cumulative volumetric strain of the intact
specimen is about 25% larger than that of the recompacted
one. Similar results are found at suction of 100 kPa, as
shown in Fig. 5(b). The differences between the intact and
recompacted specimens may be attributed to their different
soil structures. For intact specimens, there are a number
of large pores (Bai et al., 2014) with a diameter of more
than 200 μm, as shown in the SEM image in Fig. 6(a). The
pores of the recompacted specimen are relatively uniform
and no large inter-aggregate pore is observed (Fig. 6(b)). In
addition, the wetting-induced collapse (contractive volu-
metric strain during the wetting process, Alonso et al., 1990)
has caused a larger void ratio of intact specimen before
heating and cooling than that of the recompacted specimen.
With larger pores and a larger void ratio, the intact specimen
shows larger volume change under heating and cooling
cycles.
CONCLUSIONS
For both intact and recompacted low-plasticity clay speci-
mens (i.e. loess soil), contractive volumetric strain increases
as the temperature increases from 23°C (room temperature)
to 53°C incrementally. This may be due to the fact that the
heating-induced expansion of soil particles triggered particle
rearrangement and facilitated plastic contraction. During
the cooling process from 53 to 13°C, contractive volumetric
strain keeps increasing at a rate of around 2 × 10−3%/°C.
When the soil temperature further decreases from 13 to 5°C,
a plastic volume contraction at a much higher rate of
2·5 × 10−2%/°C is observed. This is different from previous
studies on remoulded illite and natural silty clay. The change
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of contraction rate and plastic volume changes during
cooling are probably due to cooling-induced contraction of
soil particles, leading to plastic particle rearrangements in
loess. More importantly, the observed plastic response
during cooling cannot be captured by the existing thermo-
mechanical models, which predicts elastic contraction
during cooling. A new ‘TD’ yield surface may be introduced
into the existing thermo-mechanical models to simulate the
observed elastoplastic behaviour during cooling.
The cumulative volumetric strain induced in an intact
specimen by the applied thermal cycle is about 25% larger
than that of the recompacted one. This is probably due to the
existence of larger pores in the intact specimens.
For the given thermal cycle applied, the difference
between thermally induced volume changes at suctions of
0 and 100 kPa is 5% on average, which is much less
significant than that reported on other soils such as Boom
clay. This is likely because strain hardening induced by
wetting collapse of the loess soil compensates the effects of
suction-induced hardening on soil behaviour.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors acknowledge the financial support provided by
the National Natural Science Foundation of China through
the research grant 51509041. In addition, the authors also
extend their thanks to the Research Grants Council of the
Hong Kong Special Administrative Region (HKSAR) for
their financial support from projects 647616812 and
16209415.
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