Effect of Pore Fluid Salinity on Compressibility and Shear Strength Development of Clayey Soils

Abstract

Investigations of shear strength, compressibility and moisture content of a recent marine clay in the Caspian Sea showed soil profiles with a lower shear strength and higher moisture content, than expected for a normally consolidated soil. Further, measured preconsolidation pressures were lower than the calculated in-situ effective stress, suggesting that the deposit was underconsolidated. The pore fluid salinity was also measured and showed an increase with depth up to saturation concentration. A research project was carried out to study the effect of pore fluid salinity on shear strength and compressibility of remoulded clays. Results of this study showed that increasing pore fluid salinity caused a decrease of the moisture content for a normally consolidated clayey soil of high plasticity. The remoulded shear strength corresponded with the measured moisture contents. The observed compressive behaviour of these clays is explained using the modified effective stress concept, which considers not only (excess) pore pressure and effective pressure, but also the electrochemical repulsive and attractive forces between the clay particles. The laboratory tests on remoulded clays show opposite results to the measurements on the natural soils. The effects of soil structure are used to explain the differences for the measurements of moisture content, undrained shear strength and preconsolidation pressure. The oedometer test procedure was reviewed and additional tests were performed on natural clay samples from this site. Results showed that the measured pre-consolidation pressure depends largely on the salinity of the permeating fluid used in the oedometer apparatus and suggest that when testing marine clays with very high pore fluid salinity, using a brine solution that closely resembles the pore fluid chemistry yields a measured preconsolidation pressure closer to the known geological stress history.