Civil Engineering Soil Mechanics Experiments

Compaction Test

  1. Add a weighing machine and a mould from the apparatus menu and weigh the mould by clicking on it. Observe the change in the observations menu. The mould is weighed to account for its weight in future measurements of other components added to the mould.
  2. Click on the mould to move it back away from the weighing machine to make space for other apparatus to be used in the coming steps.
  3. Add a soil sample and a container of water from the apparatus menu and pour the water onto the soil by clicking on the container. The water is added to get the water content of the soil around 8%. Also observe that the volume of the soil sample is determined as is visible from the value in the observations menu.
  4. Add a collar to the mould from the apparatus menu. Also add a rammer from the apparatus menu. The rammer will be used to compact the soil by repeated blows/strikes.
  5. Move a portion (roughly one-third) of the soil to the mould for compaction by clicking on it. Compact the soil to occupy only about one-third of the mould assembly's height by clicking on the rammer. It will take about 25 blows to achieve this. This procedure is repeated two more times until all the soil has been compacted inside the mould assembly.
  6. Remove the collar and trim off the excess soil with a trimming knife by clicking on the mould. Add a weighing machine from the apparatus menu and weigh the mould with the compacted soil by clicking on it.
  7. Take a representative sample from the mould and determine its water content. Use the following link to learn more about water content determination.
  8. Observe the values obtained for different trials in the table. We obtain wet density using the formula: Wet Density = Mass of Wet Soil / Volume of Soil. We obtain the dry density using the formula: Dry Density = Wet Density / (1 + Water Content). Also observe the corresponding graph obtained and derive the optimum moisture content and the maximum dry density values by taking the readings at the peak.
  9. Click the restart button to perform the experiment again.