Experimental investigation on the primary and secondary consolidation behaviors of organic soil under different water contents

This paper herein presents an experimental investigation to explore the performance of organic soil under two stages of consolidation: primary and secondary consolidations. An organic soil with 23% of organic matter has been used in this study at three different molding water contents. Water contents used were optimum water content (OWC), liquid limit (LL), and an intermediate level of water content (MC) between OWC and LL. It was found that more water content, more void ratio, and more consolidation. The calculated coefficient of secondary consolidation C α within a range started from the lower value of 0.0044 for OWC and ended with the upper value of 0.0181 for MC. The molding water content has no significant effect on the secondary consolidation coefficient when the stress has increased, increasing in water content (more than optimum water content) gives fairly close values of coefficient of secondary consolidation (for MC and LL), and the coefficient of secondary consolidation has increased when the water content increased.