What is clay? A new definition of “clay” based on plasticity and its impact on the most widespread soil classification systems

Clays are key elements not only in geological and environmental processes, but also in many human activities. To differentiate clays from other soils, AIPEA and CMS highlight plasticity as the clays' most distinctive characteristic. However, the lack of any reliable plasticity yardstick makes the particle-size-criteria to be more widespread. In a previous work, the authors found some innovative ratios between the plasticity index (PI) and the liquid limit (LL) which allowed the clays' boundary to be established according to a plasticity basis. As plasticity is directly associated with toughness, different published data containing valuable information have been processed in this study by plotting toughness values against PI/LL ratios. In this way, the soundness of the previous authors' finding has been checked. It is demonstrated that a fine-grained material can be defined as a clay when PI ≥ LL/2, while a material is moderately or slightly clayey if LL/3 < PI < LL/2, such that when PI ≤ LL/3 the influence of clay minerals is much reduced. Apart from an updated classification of soil for engineering purposes, a new textural soil classification is presented, alternative to the USDA one, which allows the real nature of a soil to be known accurately by means of plasticity tests and simple sieving instead of particle-size sedimentation methods.