Hydraulic conductivity of remolded fine-grained soils versus index properties

Hydraulic conductivity is a dominant parameter in the design of engineered waste disposal facilities such as landfill liners and covers, lagoon liners and slurry walls. It is of interest to a geotechnical or geo-environmental engineer to develop a predictive method of determining the hydraulic conductivity of fine-grained soils, in order to assess its suitability as a liner material. To predict the hydraulic conductivity of soils, researchers and geotechnical engineers have attempted to correlate it with index properties of the soils, such as the liquid limit, void ratio and specific surface. Based on the present study a predictive method has been developed in this paper to predict the hydraulic conductivity in terms of void ratio and shrinkage index (Liquid limit – shrinkage limit) for remoulded fine-grained soils. Though the initial conditions for the soil will affect the hydraulic conductivity behaviour to some extent, both the void ratio and soil characteristics are primary factors in affecting the hydraulic conductivity. Therefore for predictive purpose, the study of hydraulic conductivity behaviour of remoulded fine-grained soils as presented in this paper can be found to be useful for compacted soils also.