The Mechanical Properties and Their Engineering Applications to Unsaturated Soils

Unsaturated soil from a geotechnical engineering viewpoint has different behavior from the soils that are saturated. In the last few decades many attempts have been made to apply satur pil mechanism principles to problems involving unsaturated soil. None of these attempts have proven to be very successful.In this paper consideration is given to the significance of phases of an unsaturated soil and their engineering properties. Stress state variable and volume change constitutive relationship for unsaturated soil are proposed and used to analyze the volume change problems related to expansive soil and slope stability problems associated with unsaturated soils.