Correlation of Compaction Characteristics with Free Swell Ratio of Fine Grained Soils

Compaction is one of the very important technique used to improve the soil properties. Compaction is a process that will be performed in the laboratory by obtaining the soil from the construction location. During the construction of large structures the geotechnical engineer has to deal with large quantity of data. Arriving at large number of compaction parameters such as Optimum moisture content (w_opt) and Maximum dry unit weight (γdmax) is a time consuming process. In that case finding out the compaction parameters by simple correlations will be faster and also gainful. Several attempts have been made by many researchers to correlate compaction characteristics with index properties, Plastic limit and sediment volume test etc. But since this Free swell ration test is very easy to perform and does not require much effort, in this work an attempt is made to correlate compaction characteristics with Free swell ratio of soil. Hence with the intention of developing correlations ten soil samples, five red soils (Kaolinitic soils) and five black soils (Montmorillonitic soils) are collected from different places of Karnataka. In order to establish the correlations compaction tests for varying compactive efforts and free swell ratio tests were conducted on collected ten soil samples. Then correlations were established between compaction characteristics such as optimum water content (w_opt) and maximum dry unit weight () and FSR. It is investigated that there exists a good relationship between the compaction characteristics and the FSV. This correlation can be a useful means for civil engineers in assessing the compaction characteristics quickly especially during initial phases of a project.