DETERMINATION OF PLASTIC LIMIT OF SOIL USING MODIFIED METHODS
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.11113/mjce.v20.15772Keywords:
Cone Penetration, Rolling Device, Liquid Limit, Plastic Limit.Abstract
Plastic limit is an important property of fine-grained soils. The standard thread-rolling
method for determining the plastic limit has long been criticized for requiring considerable
judgments from the operator. This study was conducted to seek for a new method on the
determination of the plastic limit in a way to overcome the inconsistence result produce by usingthe standard thread-rolling method. Four different methods were tested. The first method was the modified fall cone method, a method commonly used to obtain a liquid limit. The second method was the rolling device method which is previously proposed by Bobrowski and Griekspoor (1992). The third method was proposed by Wood and Wroth (1978) using a heavier cone. The fourth method was the one proposed by Tao-Wei Feng (2004) which made use of a small soil container. Eight soil samples representing plasticity index (PI) ranging from 15 to 42% were tested. The results indicated that the correlation factor between the standard methods and the suggested methods were in the range 0.72 and 0.99. Regarding to the regression analysis result, the first method is more comparable to the standard thread method.
References
British Standard Institution (BSI).1990. Method of tests for soils for civil engineering purposes. BS1377, London.
Bobrowski, L. J., Jr., and Griekspoor, D.M. (1992). Determination of plastic limit of a soils by means of a rolling device. Geotechnical Testing Journal. 15(3) : 284-287
Hansbo, S. (1957) A new approach to the determination of the shear strength of clays by the fall-cone test. Proc. Roy. SGI 14,
- 48
Koumoto, T. and Houlsby, G. T. (2001) "Theory and practice of the fall cone test. Geotechnique 51, No. 8, 701 -712
Tao-Wei Feng (2004) "Using small ring and a fall-cone to determine the plastic limit. Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, 130(6), 630-635
Wood D.M and Wroth C.P. (1978) "The use of the cone penetrometer to determine the plastic limit of soils." Ground Engineering 11(3), 3 7
Yousseff, M.S., El Ramli, A.H., and El Demery, M. (1965). Relationships between shear strength, consolidation, liquid limit, and plastic limit for remoulded clays. Proceedings of 6th International Conference on Soil Mechanics and Foundation
Engineering, Montreal, P.Q., Vol. 1, pp. 126-129