Experimental study on engineering properties of meadow soil in Zhaosu County of Xinjiang

Few research results about engineering properties of meadow soil are available, which makes it difficult to distinguish meadow soil from peaty soil. At the same time, the ground treatment measures cannot be chosen appropriately during construction. Based on the meadow soil in Zhaosu County of Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, according to Chinese laboratory geotechnical tests on soils, many indexes of the meadow soil are investigated, such as specific gravity, bulk density, water content, loss on ignition, coefficient of permeability, shear strength, unconfined compressive strength, and they are compared with those of worldwide meadow soil, peat and peaty soil. The test results show that the meadow soil can be classified as a kind of peaty soil based on its loss on ignition. Its water content is near the lower limit of the peaty soil, and its bulk density is larger than that of the peaty soil. The meadow soil has high permeability and compressibility, and it also has high cohesive strength because of the grass root in it. The grass root has little effect on the internal friction angle. The compressive distortion and bulging distortion of meadow soil are large, and its failure mode during the unconfined compressive tests is not shear destruction. The primary consolidation of the meadow soil is completed in short time, and its primary consolidation coefficient decreases with the increasing stress. When the consolidation stress is larger than 100 kPa, the primary consolidation ratio is small, which means that the secondary consolidation of the meadow soil cannot be ignored during the settlement calculation.