A RATIONAL APPROACH TO THE DETERMINATION OF THE SHEAR STRENGTH PARAMETERS OF UNSATURATED SOILS

The determination of the shear strength of unsaturated soils is a great challenge to soil engineers, both in terms of understanding it and the effort necessary to determine it. Great care was taken therefore to penetrate and analyse the present knowledge of unsaturated soils. Based on this, a very simplified hypothesis for the determination of the shear strength of unsaturated soils is put forward. Values of shear strengths have been drawn from the literature and compared with shear strengths calculated according to this hypothesis. The shear strengths obtained from the hypothesis are in surprisingly good agreement with those from the literature. Finally, a reasonable way of applying the hypothesis in engineering practice is proposed. (A) For the covering abstract see IRRD 881647.