Quantification of Swelling Pressure of Expansive Soils: A Critical Review

The magnitude of swelling pressures must be accurately estimated/predicted using appropriate methods for a safe design and performance of pertinent geotechnical infrastructure on expansive soils. This paper reviews various methods used by researchers in the past decades to quantify swelling pressure in different directions. Methods reported in literature for the determination of swelling pressure can be categorized into experimental, analytical, and numerical studies. Laboratory methods are affected by scaling and boundary effects, whereas fields tests are time consuming and expensive; however, numerical models with appropriate validation can predict swelling pressures efficiently. Various factors that affect swelling pressures are clay mineralogy, dry density, initial water content, boundary conditions, and matric suction. In the present critical review, it is observed that matric suction, a significant factor affecting the swelling behavior of unsaturated expansive soil, was considered in only a few studies.