Book Description

Objectives of this field study were to investigate means of compacting soils at near-zero water content. Two 125-ft-long test sections were constructed, each consisting of five test items 25 ft long with a 5-ft-deep test bed. In each test section, the first item consisted of 1.5 ft of crushed limestone (GW) over 3.5 ft of bomb-crater debris. The remaining four items consisted of 5 ft of silty clay (ML0, river sand (CL-ML), gravelly sand (SP), and sand tailings (SP), respectively. One test section was compacted with a single drum self-propelled vibratory roller and the other with a towed four-sided impact single drum sel-propelled vibratory roller and the other with a towed four-sided impact roller. Test results were not fully conclusive because of the difficulty in drying soils with fines, rotational slippage of the impact roller during testing, and precompaction of the soils in the vibratory roller test section during construction. However, it could be concluded that (a) compaction at low water content was feasible primarily with soils with few fines, (b) significant difficulty would be experienced in field-drying soils with high fines content, (c) both compactors generally gave acceptable results, but the rate of compaction of the impact roller was much higher than that of the vibratory roller, and (d) test results warranted further investigation of compaction with the impact roller.