Soil Moisture Content and Density Prediction Using Laboratory Resistivity Experiment

Abstract

Abstract-Natural soils are an intimate mixture of solid, liquid and gas phases. This study establishes a correlation for moisture content and density of a soil with its electrical resistivity. In the past, most of the conventional geotechnical site investigation required bulky and heavy equipment to determine the geotechnical parameters necessary for design and construction purposes. Consequentially, time and cost of the project is increased especially when dealing with some difficult site such as on mountainous terrain. This study is based on laboratory soil box resistivity meter observations made on soils mixed with additions of consistent increments of 1-5 % of water to 1500 gram of remolded soils in loose condition. At least 24 repetitive resistivity test observations were made and the moisture content and soil density was determined concurrently for each of the tests. The observations showed that the electrical resistivity variation decreased in a curvilinear manner with increasing percentage of moisture content. A regression equation and coefficient of determination, R2 for moisture content against soil electrical resistivity value was established by moisture content, w = 152.87ρ-0.312 (ρ = soil electrical resistivity) and R2 = 0.7718 respectively. While a regression equation and R2 value for bulk density versus soil electrical resistivity value was observed to be ρbulk = -0.107 ln (ρ) + 1.7249 and 0.7016 respectively. Hence, a viable method is demonstrated where the electrical resistivity value was applicable and has a great potential for geotechnical data prediction of parameters such as moisture content and soil density.Index Terms-Correlation, moisture content, soil electrical resistivity and soil density.

The Reciprocal Effect Between Soil Water Content and The Soil Bulk Density on The Growth and Yield Of Onion (Allium cepa L.)

“…It is in line with the finding of Ghosh, (2013) through a laboratory experiment that if the soil is wetted further, the extra water replaces some of the solid soil particles, and the dry density reduces as there is less material present. The same result also reported by Abidin et al (2013) who predict the soil water content and soil bulk density using laboratory resistivity experiment. JAAST 5(2): 84 -94 (2021) 85 However, the effect of the two quantities on plants is also reciprocal (Hillel, 2004); (Nunes et al, 2016); (Korenkova and Urik, 2017).…”

Correlation Analysis Between Field Electrical Resistivity Value (ERV) and Basic Geotechnical Properties (BGP)

“…Similar findings were reported in important pilot studies used to establish a correlation between ERV and BGP for a further stage such as the correlation between ERV with moisture content, density, unit weight, etc. [1, [18][19][20][21][22][23]. The resistivity value is highly influenced by the characteristics of the pore fluid and the grain matrix structure of geo materials [24].…”

Development of A Soil Resistivity Calculator

“…As reported in [6], moisture content can be used to determine soil resistivity using Eq. ( 1) with correlation coefficient of 0.7718.…”