To Determine The Shrinkage Limit of Soil
Apparatus
Shrinkage dish, electric oven, mercury, electric balance, sieve#40, spatula and containers.
Procedure
- Take a soil sample passing through sieve#40 and add some amount of water in it to form a thick uniform paste.
- Take the shrinkage dish, weigh it, and put some of the soil mixture in it by spatula, fill it and again weigh it.
- Place the shrinkage dish in the oven for 24hours at 110-115C.
- Find the volume of the shrinkage dish using mercury this will be equal to the volume of the saturated soil sample.
- Take mercury in container and weigh it, put dry soil in it the mercury is displaced.
- Collect carefully the displace mercury and weigh it with great accuracy.
- The volume of dry soil is then determined by dividing the weight by the unit weight of mercury.
- The shrinkage limit is then calculated using the formula.
S.L = {{(w1-wd)-(v1-vd) γw}/ wd] x 100
Where,
W1 = M2-M1
WD = m3-M1
Precautions
The displaced mercury should be carefully collected in order to get exact weight of mercury displaced.
