Prof. D. N. Singh

RAVITEJ PILLI

M.Tech.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, India pillliravitej@gmail.com

SOME NOVEL TECHNIQUES FOR ESTIMATING THE TENSILE STRENGTH OF FINE-GRAINED SOILS

The tensile strength of the soil mass plays a decisive role in formation/initiation of cracks and their propagation and its knowledge is essential to study and analyze the stability of earth-fill dams, slopes, embankments, highway, airfield pavements, deterioration of the cricket pitches and ice lens development process during the freezing of soils. The tensile strength of the soil mass can be defined as the resistance offered by it to the force tending to tear it apart and is measured as the maximum tension that the soil mass can withstand without tearing. Several testing methodologies and correlations have been proposed by the earlier researchers to determine and compute the tensile strength of the soil mass, respectively. However, these methodologies are quite complicated to follow, time consuming and many a times soil specific and hence cannot be considered as generalized. Also, these correlations either neglect the effect of soil properties or the water content, which have been shown to have significant influence over the tensile strength. In order to overcome these limitations, a simple methodology that can be employed for computing the tensile strength of the soil mass based on its penetration resistance and shear wave velocity has been attempted in this study. The utility and efficiency of the proposed methodology has also been demonstrated.