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Sort plastic soils based on resistance to state court remoulded undrained
Authors: Heriberto Echezuría

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It was possible to demonstrate that the absolute value
of the slope, m, of the line log(Su)-log(w) is intimately
related to the plasticity of the soil, whereas, its position in the log(Su)-log(w) space is controlled by the amount of non-plastic fines in the soil. On the other hand, it was also demonstrated that for a given value of the Liquid Limit (LL) the value of, m, increases drastically as the Plasticity
Index (PI) decreases, whereas, for a given PI the value of ,m, increases slowly as the LL increases. Consequently, it was possible to generate in the Plasticity Chart curves
representatives to the locus of soils with identical value of, m. Furthermore, it was also established that the LL is related to the water content of the soil for a undrained remoulded shear strength of 1.5 kN/m2. All these facts allowed the formulation of an alternative method to classify plastic soils based on the locus of the value of, m, in the plasticity chart and the water content at a shear strength of 1.5 kN/m2 of the remoulded soil. It is worth mentioning that the soil classification obtained with thismethod is equivalent to that obtained with conventional ASTM methods to determine Atterberg Limits. Finally, it was demonstrated that the non-plastic fines content allows correlating the value of, m, with the liquefactionpotential of plastic soils.