OPPORTUNITIES FOR DEVELOPMENT IN TESTING AND RESEARCH OF UNSATURATED SOILS IN SUDAN

E.O. Ahmed, A.M. Elsharief

Abstract


Sudan is a tropical county which is dominated by hot arid climate. The top soils are therefore unsaturated with low natural water content and consequently deep ground water. Large plains of desiccated highly plastic potentially expansive clays cover central and eastern Sudan. Nationally, geotechnical related research focused first on understanding the swelling phenomenon of the theses clay deposits and the design and performance of foundations on
these soils. Theories of classical soil mechanics had been in use by practitioners for handling these geotechnical problems. With the development of unsaturated soil mechanics around the world researchers in the country started to focus on the field on experimental unsaturated soil mechanics. This paper reviews the available research efforts on theoretical formulations and laboratory testing on Sudanese soils, excreted so far by international and national scholars
in the field of unsaturated soils, with special attention to topics such as characterization of unsaturated soils, volume change behavior, shear strength and compressibility. Opportunities and challenges facing the research efforts are outlined and discussed.


Keywords


unsaturated soil;volume change;shear strength;compressibility

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