Measurement of Soil Tensile Strength and Factors Affecting its Measurements

This paper describes the tensile strength measured for three kinds of statically compacted unsaturated soils; mixtures of clay ~ silt ~ sand, Narita-sand and Kanto loam. Specimens were directly prepared either under controlled compaction stress or under controlled dry density by statically compacting them within the tensile mold of the apparatus. Image analysis was done to show the normality of tensile force to the tensile failure plane. Tensile strengths (q_t) were compared with the unconfined compressive strengths (q_u) for silt ~ sand mixture, clay ~ sand mixture, clay ~ silt mixture and Narita sand, respectively. Increment in tensile strength (also q_u/q_t ratio) with the increase in the percentage and decrease in the size of finer soils could be seen. Effects of number of compaction layers and tensile pulling rates on the q_t were also examined. Increase in the tensile strength with the increase in the number of compaction layers was observed; and it was suggested to prepare the unsaturated compacted specimen by 3 to 4 layers compaction. Increase in tensile strength of 0.3 kPa and 0.003 kPa per one cycle of logarithm of tensile pulling rate was observed for clay ~ sand-4 (1:3) and clay ~ sand-5 (3:1) for the pulling rate of 0.01 to 1.0 mm/min.