Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
Expansive clay, also called expansive soil, is a clay soil prone to large volume changes (swelling and shrinking) directly related to changes in water content. [1] Soils with a high content of expansive minerals can form deep cracks in drier seasons or years; such soils are called vertisols.
Silt may occur as a soil (often mixed with sand or clay) or as sediment mixed in suspension with water. Silt usually has a floury feel when dry, and lacks plasticity when wet. Silt can also be felt by the tongue as granular when placed on the front teeth (even when mixed with clay particles). Silt is a common material, making up 45% of average ...
A soil survey should list the coefficient of linear extensibility (COLE) value. [2] Professional soil scientists can also analyze samples of a soil to determine its shrink-swell capacity. [2] Expansive soils will form large cracks, in roughly polygonal shapes, on the surface of the soil during dry periods. [3]
Soil texture is determined by the relative proportion of the three kinds of soil mineral particles, called soil separates: sand, silt, and clay. At the next larger scale, soil structures called peds or more commonly soil aggregates are created from the soil separates when iron oxides , carbonates , clay, silica and humus , coat particles and ...
If the soil particles in a sample are predominantly in a relatively narrow range of sizes, the sample is uniformly graded. If a soil sample has distinct gaps in the gradation curve, e.g., a mixture of gravel and fine sand, with no coarse sand, the sample may be gap graded. Uniformly graded and gap graded soils are both considered to be poorly ...
A fourth term, loam, is used to describe equal properties of sand, silt, and clay in a soil sample, and lends to the naming of even more classifications, e.g. "clay loam" or "silt loam". Determining soil texture is often aided with the use of a soil texture triangle plot. [5] An example of a soil triangle is found on the right side of the page.
Vent-based soil is formed from rock material (including pumice and tuff) that has been ejected into the air and cooled before settling to the earth. 2.) Lava-based soil is the product of lava flows from the volcano. Ninety percent of lava-based soil is composed of basalt with the other ten percent composed of andesite, pitchstone, rhyolite, and ...
Fly ash absorbent for fluids in mud pits. Other properties include: Most drilling muds are thixotropic (viscosity increases when static). This characteristic keeps the cuttings suspended when the mud is not flowing, for example, when replacing the drill bit. Fluids that have shear thinning and elevated viscosities are efficient for hole cleaning.