Swell characterization of expansive clays from Comodoro Rivadavia

D. MANZANAL; S. ORLANDI; E. MIRANDA; M. ROBINSON; BARRIA, JC

Cancun

Conferencia; XVI Pan-American Conference on Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering; 2019

Sociedad Mexicana de Mecánica de Suelos

Expansive soils from Comodoro Rivadavia (CR) city (Argentine) causesignificate damages in houses and civil infrastructure. A laboratory investigationwas carried out over three clays from different parts of the city to study the volumechange and swell pressure develop during wetting. Experimental program consistson the physical, chemical and mineralogical characterization. The volume changeswere studied with the standard free swelling test, constrains swelling tests and swellpressure tests. The microstructure was studied by mercury intrusion porosimetry(MIP) to evaluate the porous changes for compacted samples for different watercontent. These investigations show the correlations between volume changes andswell pressures for different water contents and compaction efforts. Interpretationof the laboratory results is presented in the framework of simple models of swellingdeformation and swelling pressure. Furthermore, a simple evaluation of the microand macro porosities to evaluate the expansion potential is calculated for the claystudied.