Dilatancy (granular material) dilation. Because of dilatancy, the angle of friction increases as the confinement increases until it reaches a peak value. After the peak strength of the soil is mobilized the angle of friction abruptly decreases. As a result, geotechnical engineering of slopes, footings, tunnels, and piles in such soils have to consider the potential decrease in strength after the soil strength reaches this peak value. Poorly / uniformly graded silt with trace sand to sandy that is non-plastic can be associated with challenges during construction, even when they are hard. These materials often appear to be granular because the silt is
Soil specific surface area and its unbalanced negative electric charges, clay is the most active mineral component of soil. It is a colloidal and most often a crystalline material. In soils, clay is a soil textural class and is defined in a physical sense as any mineral particle less than in effective diameter. Many soil minerals, such as gypsum, carbonates, or quartz, are small enough to be classified as clay based on their physical size, but chemically they do not afford the same utility as do mineralogically-defined clay minerals. Chemically, clay minerals are a range of phyllosilicate minerals with certain reactive