At-rest lateral earth pressure of compacted expansive soils: Experimental investigations and prediction approach

This paper presents experimental studies on a compacted expansive soil, from Nanyang, China for investigating the at-rest lateral earth pressure σL of expansive soils. The key studies include (i) relationships between the σL and the vertical stress σV during soaking and consolidation, (ii) the influences of initial dry density ρd0 and moisture content w0 on the vertical and lateral swelling pressures at no swelling strain (i.e. σV0 and σL0), and (iii) evolution of the σL during five long-term wetting-drying cycles. Experimental results demonstrated that the post-soaking σL-σV relationships are piecewise linear and their slopes in the passive state (σL > σV) and active state (σL