Soil of these properties determine the aeration of the soil and the ability of water to infiltrate and to be held within the soil. The mineral components of soil are sand, silt and clay, and their relative proportions determine a soil's texture. Properties that are influenced by soil texture include porosity, permeability, infiltration, shrink-swell rate, water-holding capacity, and susceptibility to erosion. In the illustrated USDA textural classification triangle, the only soil in which neither sand, silt nor clay predominates is called loam. While even pure sand, silt or clay may be considered a soil, from the perspective of conventional agriculture a
Dilatancy (granular material) new space between the grains. Reynolds dilatancy concept has been brought into the field of geotechnical engineers by Peter Walter Rowe, and is a part of the broader topic of soil mechanics. The phenomenon of dilatancy can be observed in a simple shear test on a sample of dense sand. In the initial stage of deformation, the volumetric strain decreases as the shear strain increases. But as the stress approaches its peak value, the volumetric strain starts to increase. After some more shear, the soil sample has a larger volume than when the test was started. The amount of dilation