Plasticity: Plasticity Functions

In geotech: Geotechnical Engineering

Description

These functions compute diferent aspects related to plasticity:

• LL calculates and plots a soil's liquid limit (LL) using the flow curve from measured lab data.

• PI calculates plasticity index.

• LI calculates liquidity index.

• A.line calculates the PI corresponding to the A-line on Casagrande's plasticity chart.

• plasticity.plot plots a soil's plasticity parameters on Casagrande's plasticity chart.

Usage

LL(N, w, draw)
PI(LL, PL)
LI(w, LL, PL)
A.line(LL)
plasticity.plot(LL, PL = NA, PI = NA)

Arguments

LL	Liquid Limit (percent)
PL	Plastic Limit (percent)
PI	Plasticity index (percent)
w	moisture content (percent) [see details below]
N	vector of number of blows obtained from the liquid limit test (for LL function)
draw	logical variable: TRUE if plot of flow curve is desired, and FALSE to suppress the creation of the plot (for LL function)

Details

• Note that all inputs should be entered as percents, not decimals (e.g. w = 23, not w = 0.23)

• The argument w (water content) should be a single value for the LI function that represents the soil's in-situ moisture content; and w should be a vector of values for the LL function that represent the measured water contents, each with N blows.

• For plot.plasticity and A.line, either PL or PI must be specified in addition to LL.

Value

• LL outputs a soil's liquid limit and, optionally, a plot of the soil's flow curve.

• PI outputs a two-element list composed of:

  1. PI = Plasticity index (percent)

  2. descr = qualitative description of soil based on Sowers (1979)

• LI outputs a two-element list composed of:

  1. LI = Liquidity index (percent)

  2. descr = qualitative description of soil based on Sowers (1979)

• A.line outputs the plasticity index corresponding to the A-line on Casagrande's plasticity chart

• plasticity.plot is used to make a plot of a soil's plasticity parameters (LL and PI) on Casagrande's plasticity chart. No numerical values are output from this function.

Author(s)

James Kaklamanos <[e-mail]> and Kyle Elmy <[e-mail]>

References

Casagrande, A.M. (1948). "Classification and Identification of Soils", ASCE Transactions, Vol. 113, pp. 901-991.

Sowers, G.F. (1979). "Introductory Soil Mechanics and Foundations: Geotechnical Engineering", 4th edition, Macmillan, New York.

See Also

USCS, AASHTO, grainSize

Examples

## Example code for Plasticity Index
PI(LL = 80, PL = 30)

## Example code for Liquidity Index
LI(w = 55, PL = 20, LL = 50)

## Example code for plasticity plot
plasticity.plot(LL = 40, PL = 20)

## Example code for liquid limit analysis
LL(N = c(72, 37, 14), w = c(7, 15, 21), draw = TRUE)

geotech documentation built on May 1, 2019, 9:09 p.m.