Study of soil-water charactiristics and matric suction measurement device for unsaturated silty soil

Based on the principle for tensiometer to measure the unsaturated soil matric suction, a new matric measurment device was made. With continuously reviewing and improvment for the measurement result, the unsaturated soil matrix suction measurement device with more simple, convenient, fast and reliable advantages was achieved in the experiment. With this device, the matric suctions of silty soils with different water contends, different compactness or cyclic wetting-drying were measured; and the soil-water characteristic curves of silty soils with different compactnesses were obtained. Through the Boltzmann model in Origin sofeware to fit with the experiment curve, it's show that the influence for the water content to the matric suction was improved greatly by the high compactness, and cyclic wetting-drying influence the matric suction and shear strength of the silty soils greatly.