Investigating Some Of The Engineering Properties Of Durame Soil (southern Ethiopia)

Project delays, failures and cost over-run are the results of inadequate and inappropriate soilrninvestigation. Therefore, a thorough and comprehensive geotechnical investigation is an essentialrnrequirement to the design and construction of civil engineering projects.rnThis research is intended to investigate some of the engineering properties of Durame soil. Tornachieve this objective samples from different parts of the city were collected and laboratory testsrnwere done on the collected samples.rnIdentifying the soil characteristic is essential to determine the type of test and test procedure thatrnis applied during sampling, sample preparation and testing. Accordingly, the soil underrninvestigation was identified as Lateritic soil.rnMoisture content determination using oven temperature of l05°C and Air drying for 15 daysrnwere carried out on the soil samples to investigate presence of loosely bound water of hydration.rnIt was found that there is considerable amount of structural water.rnAtterberg Limits were done for different testing procedures on the soil samples to see effect ofrntest manipulation on concretionary bond. The liquid limit tests were carried out on soilrnspecimens mixed for 5 minutes and 30 minutes durations. It was observed from the test resultsrnthat the mixing durations has significant effect on the values of liquid limits. Accordingly, thernsoil samples have been sensitive to test procedures.rnAnalysis of specific gravities of the soils using different pretreatment conditions showed that,rnincrease in drying temperature from an air-dried to 105oC oven drying temperature reducesrnspecific gravity of the soils.rnSpecific Gravity test, Particle Size Distribution, Atterberg Limit tests and Free Swell tests werernconducted on air dried and 105oc oven dried pretreatment conditions, and resulted in differentrnvalues.rnAccording to the study for air dried and oven dried temperature of 105oc ; LL ranges betweenrn44 – 79%, PI ranges between 16 – 42%,Clay fraction ranges between 15 – 75%, Free swellrnranges between 20-70% and Specific Gravity ranges between 2.52-2.97.rnix | P a g ernOne-dimensional consolidation tests were done and the soils have compression index rangingrnfrom 0.219-0.596, recompression index ranging from 0.033-0.097, coefficient of consolidationrnranging from 0.012 to 0.351 cm2/sec.

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