AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY -OF EROSION CHARACTERISTICS OF COHESIVE SOILS

Abstract

Differential settlements in earth dams can cause transverse cracks, if the embankment material lacks the necessary flexibility. These transverse cracks in earth dams can be a potential danger due to the fact that pro-gressive erosion can develop in the crack leading to complete failure. The resistance to erosion for different soils varies and the embankment material with low erosion resist-ance may develop rapid progressive erosion through the cracks. On the other hand, if the core material has high erosion resistance, transverse cracks would not develop rapidly and the filter will have a chance to seal up the cracks so that failure by progressive erosion may not develop. Experiments were conducted in the laboratory to study the erosion resistance of two different soils. The plasticity index/gradation of one of the soils was varied with admixture of sand and bentonite. An effort has been made to correlate the erosion resistance of the soil to the plasticity index, grain size distribution, compactive effort and the water content.