3.

st

The Unltlcd Soll Clsralllcatlon Syrtcm (USCS)

where Deo: grain diameler al 6OVo passing'

D;; : grain diametet at 3Wo Passing, and
D;; : grain diame ter at lWo passing by weight (or mass)'
3-2
Craaatin criteria for gravelly and sandy soils are shown in Table

(column6).TheGWandSWgroupsarewell-gradedgravellyl$sandy

and SP grouPs
soils with iess than 57o passing the No. 200 sieve. The GP
fines.
nonplastic
no
or
graded gravels and sands with little
urc poo.ly
' The fine-grained
pzssing
the No.
soils, those having more lhan 5O9o

[M for the Swedish terms mo (- very

finesand)andmjiila(:silDlandclays(C)basedontheirliqurdlimitand
Organic soiis (O) and peat (Pt) are also included in this

200 sieve, are subdivided into silts

fiasticity'index.
iraction although, as shown in Table 3-1, no grain size range is specified'
indices
Fine-grainea soits are silts (M) if their liquid limits and plasticity
(Fig.
3.2)' The
plot ielow rhe A-line on Casagranders (1948) plasticity chart
fir.,., ur. clays (c) if . the LL and PI plot Qbv-* the A-line. The A-line
generally separates the more claylike materials from those that are silty
Ind also the organics from the inorganics. The exception is organic clays
(OL and OH) which plot below the A-line. However, these soils do behave
,imitarty to soils of lower plasticity. The silt, clay, and organic fractions are
further subdivided on the basis of relatively low (L) or high (H) liquid
limits. The dividing line between the low an<l high liquid limits has been
arbitrarily set at 50. Representative st>il types for fine-grained soils are also
shown ln rlg. 3.2. This figure, columns 4 and 5 of Table 3-2, and Table
3-3, will be helpful in the visual identification and classification of finegrained soils. You can see from Fig. 3.2 that several different soil types
iend to plot in approxrmately the same area on the LL-PI chart, which
means that these soils tend to have about the same engineering behaxior'
This is why the_ casagrande chart is- so useful in the englnee-ring classification of soils. For.xurr,pt", Casagrand (t948) oUserue the behavior of
soils at the same liquid limit with plasticity index as compared with their
behavior at the same plasticity index but with an increasing liquid limit,
and he obtained the following results:

Characteristic

Dry stren$th
Toughness near PL
Permeaility
Compressibility
Rte of volume change

Soils at Equal LL
with Increasing PI

Soils at Equal PI
Incre+sing LL

wi

lncreases
lncrcases

Decreascs
Dccreascs

Dccreases

Increascs

t"Tr*

About c same
Decrcases

Toughness near the PL and dry strength are very useful visral
classification properties, aird ihey are dfid-i Table 3-3. The other'characteristics are engineering properties,.and they are discussed in great