Prof. D. N. Singh

PARESH H. SHAH

Ph. D.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, India pareshhshah@yahoo.com

SOME STUDIES ON ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF SOILS

Electrical properties of the soil have been demonstrated to be quite useful for its characterization, by several researchers. However, these studies fail to bring out any generalized relationships that can be employed for determining basic characteristics of the soil. With this in view, efforts were made to develop a methodology for determining electrical properties of the soil such as electrical conductivity and dielectric constant by employing impedance spectroscopy. Based on the results obtained for soils with entirely different characteristics, compaction states, pore-solution characteristics, efforts were made to develop a generalized Archie's law for determining electrical conductivity of the saturated and unsaturated states of the soil. Further, as the available literature does not present any guidelines for determination of the hygroscopic moisture content of the soil, efforts were made to develop a methodology, which would yield hygroscopic moisture content of the soil, accurately. It has been demonstrated that, based on the electrical properties of the soil, corresponding to its oven-dried and hygroscopic moisture content states, its basic characteristics such as the specific surface area, cation exchange capacity, liquid limit, free swell index and swelling potential can be estimated, easily. In addition to this, application of electrical properties of the soil for determining its suction and corrosion potential has also been demonstrated.
The study also deals with the description of the methodologies and details of the test setups developed to achieve these objectives.