Investigation of the Effect of Organic Pollution on the Consolidation Behavior of Fine Soils

Clay soils characteristics are completely changed in the exposure of the organic pollution, and the soil behavior determination is completely affected by some parameters such as organic pollutant type and stress history. Therefore, the soil consolidation characteristics of two kinds of clay soil with low and high plasticity have been studied. The soil samples were prepared from slurry method and slurry samples were compressed under a pre-defined load to represent the effect of stress history and different concentrations (10, 25, and 40%) of glycerol and ethanol. The results represent that the compression index (Cc) increases with increasing the concentration of the pore fluid under the slurry conditions. However, compression index decreases in samples with stress history. Although the pre-consolidation pressure increases with increasing the pollutant concentration in the low plasticity soil, the same factor is not significantly affected by pollutant concentration in the high plasticity soil. In other words, the variation of compression index is dependent on the type of the soil and the chemical composition of pore fluid.