Discussion of ?Fines Classification Based on Sensitivity to Pore-Fluid Chemistry? by Junbong Jang and J. Carlos Santamarina

MONTORO, MARCOS ALEXIS; FRANCISCA, FRANCO M.

JOURNAL OF GEOTECHNICAL AND GEOENVIRONMENTAL ENGINEERING

ASCE-AMER SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS

Lugar: Reston, Virginia; Año: 2017

1090-0241

The discussers highlight the relevance of fluid chemistry in reactive porous media behavior (e.g. fine particle soils with high swelling minerals contents). Particle?fluid interactions that take place at micro-scale are very often responsible for the macroscopic behavior of soils (e.g. changes in hydraulic conductivity reported by Montoro and Francisca 2010, soil compressibility reported by Tiwari and Ajmera 2014 and liquid sorption capacity reported by Benson et al. 2014). Results reported by these authors clearly show that observed behavior of fine soils with similar particle size distribution, similar plasticity but different mineralogy and affinity with water molecules can be attributed to a very different electrical susceptibility, still not captured by current soil classification systems. Also, the hydraulic conductivity of fine particle soils can also be related to the free swelling potential of the soil in contact with different liquids (Jo et al. 2001; Kolstad et al. 2004, Lee et al. 2005).