Consolidation behavior of two fine-grained soils contaminated by glycerol and ethanol

• The effects of organic contaminants on consolidation behavior of soil is studied
• Compression index Cc is dependent on stress history, soil type, organic fluid and its concentration
• Preconsolidation pressure is changed with soil type, organic fluid and its concentration
• Physicochemical and mechanical factors affect consolidation of contaminated soil

An experimental program was conducted to investigate the effect of pore fluid and stress history on the consolidation behavior of two clay soils with low and high plasticity. The soil samples were prepared by slurry method with water and different concentrations (10, 25 and 40%) of two organic fluids (glycerol and ethanol). Consolidation tests were performed on two types of samples (a-slurry samples, b- slurry samples compressed under a pre-defined load to represent the effect of stress history) in an odometer apparatus. The results show that the compression index Cc increases for both soils with increasing the concentration of ethanol but the variations are not considerable for glycerol. On the contrary in the case of samples with stress history there is a decrease in the compression index of soil samples. The preconsolidation pressure increases for the soil with low plasticity but for the soil with high plasticity there is no significant change in preconsolidation pressure. Furthermore the variation of compression index is dependent on the type of soil and chemical composition of pore fluid.