Prof. D. N. Singh

KOLAPALLI ROHINI

M.Tech.
Indian Institute of Technology Bombay, Powai, India kolapalli_rohini@rediffmail.com

DETERMINATION OF ELECTRICAL PROPERTIES OF SOILS

Determination of electrical properties of soils is essential for predicting various parameters which directly or indirectly influence characteristics of the soil mass. With this in view, an effort has been made to determine soil electrical resistivity and its dielectric constant, by conducting experiments on the silty soil and white clay samples which are compacted at various dry density, water content and saturation. To achieve this ?Electrical Resistivity Box? and ?Electrical Resistivity Probe? have been fabricated and their efficiency in determining resitivity and capacitance, of the soil mass, has been demonstrated. A TDR probe has been used to determine volumetric water content of the soil mass. Based on the study, efforts have been made to develop relationships between resitivity and capacitance with respect to saturation, dry density and water content. Efforts have also been made to develop relationships between dielectric ocnstant, porosity, dry density and volumetric water content and these relationships have been validated vis-?-vis results obtained from the equations proposed by Topp et al. (1980), Roth et al. (1990) and Gardener et al. (1998). An excellent matching of the results has been observed.