Geotechnical Engineering I

Introduction to Soil Lecture # 1

Engr. Muhammad Awais Shafique Department of Transportation Engineering & Management University of Engineering & Technology, Lahore
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Fruit for mind

The aim of education should be to teach us rather how to think, than what to think - rather to improve our minds, so as to enable us to think for ourselves, than to load the memory with thoughts of other men. Bill Beattie

What is Soil???
To a civil engineer, the term soil means, the loose unconsolidated inorganic material on the earths crust produced by the disintegration of rocks, overlying hard rock with or without organic matter.

Geotechnical Engineering
It is the study of the engineering behaviour of soil under different types of loads, when used either as a construction material or as a foundation material.

Why Transportation Engineers need to study about soil?

Why study Geotech??

Pavement Design may consist of the design of flexible or rigid pavements. Flexible pavements depend more on the subgrade soil for transmitting the traffic loads. Problems peculiar to the design of pavements are the effect of repetitive loading, swelling and shrinkage of sub soil and frost action.

Why study Geotech??

Consideration of these and other factors in the efficient design of a pavement is a must and one cannot do without the knowledge of soil mechanics.

Formation of Soil
Soil is formed by weathering or disintegration of parent rock. The process of weathering of the rock decreases the cohesive forces binding the mineral grains and leads to the disintegration of bigger masses to smaller and smaller particles.

Formation of Soil
Weathering

Mechanical

Chemical

Freezing & thawing

Swelling

Temp. changes

Erosion

Natural disaster

Activities by plants, animals

Formation of Soil
Weathering

Mechanical

Chemical

Oxidation

Hydration

Carbonation

Desilication

Leaching

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Soil Deposits
Parent Rock

Transported Soil

Residual Soil

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Commonly used soils

Bentonite is a clay formed by the decomposition of volcanic ash with a high content of montmorillonite.

Varved Clays consist of thin alternating layers of silt and fat clays of glacial origin. Kaolin, China Clay are very pure forms of white clay used in the ceramic industry.
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Commonly used soils

Boulder Clay is a mixture of an unstratified sedimented deposit of glacial clay, containing unsorted rock fragments of all sizes ranging from boulders, cobbles, and gravel to finely pulverized clay material. Calcareous Soil is a soil containing calcium carbonate. Such soil effervesces when tested with weak hydrochloric acid.
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Commonly used soils

Loam is a mixture of sand, silt and clay. Marl consists of a mixture of calcareous sands, clays, or loam. Hardpan is a relatively hard, densely cemented soil layer, like rock which does not soften when wet. Boulder clays or glacial till is also sometimes named as hardpan.
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Commonly used soils

Caliche is an admixture of clay, sand, and gravel cemented by calcium carbonate deposited from ground water.

Peat is a fibrous aggregate of finer fragments of decayed vegetable matter. Peat is very compressible and one should be cautious when using it for supporting foundations of structures.

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Commonly used soils

Loess is a fine-grained, air-borne deposit characterized by a very uniform grain size, and high void ratio. The size of particles ranges between about 0.01 to 0.05 mm. Shale is a material in the state of transition from clay to slate. Shale itself is sometimes considered a rock but, when it is exposed to the air or has a chance to take in water it may rapidly decompose.
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So what have we
studied today??

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