Types of Soil Tests for Construction Projects
More than 25% of the earth is covered with land. Land is used for various purposes. Some are kept for the forest, some for agriculture, and some for construction purposes. All the purposes purely depend upon the type of land. According to the government, there are certain rules and regulations that are to be done before the start of any construction project.
This is the major reason that it is important to conduct a soil test before putting up the land for a specific use. For carrying on this lab testing equipment is required or you can also hire the professionals for the same. This will simply help you to know the characteristics of the soil of the land. Moving further, there are various soil testing tests that you can undergo according to your requirement.
Types of soil tests for construction projects are:-
- Particle test: this test is done to check the types of particles present in the soil. In other words, the soil is tested to determine the density of the soil and to compare the ratio of soil to water. For conducting this test, the bottle test and pycnometer test are used more.
- Test for moisture level: it is important to know the moisture level of the soil before constructing a building on it. As lesser the moisture, more will be the strength of the foundation of the building. There are various methods for evaluating the moisture level of the soil such as the oven-drying method, calcium carbide method, sand bath method, radiation method, etc. In the oven- drying method, the sample soil is weighed and heated and allowed to dry, and therefore the difference in the weights of the soil before the heat and after heat is the moisture level in the soil.
- Atterberg limits test: it is to determine the amount of water content in the soil. This is done on the fine-grained soil for evaluating its properties under various conditions such as liquid limit, plastic limit, shrinkage limit.
- Density test: in this test, the weight of the soil is to be divided by its water content to check the density of the soil. Sand replacement, core cutter, and water displacement are the methods for the same.
- Compaction test: this test helps to determine the maximum dry density with the help of an exact evaluation of optimum water content required for the same.
Hence, these are the types of soil tests for construction projects which can be undertaken with the help of required material testing equipment. Some of these tests are done in the lab and some are done at the site. This is the basic requirement for the construction otherwise, the constructed property may start getting issues that might damage the property. Without soil testing, the construction process cannot be commenced. The foundation to be laid for the building is based on these soil reports i.e. what type of material to be used, or what type of construction method or technique to be used, for how much time the land is to be left vacate.
