Relationship between soil erodibility and engineering properties

Different soils exhibit different erodibility (sand, clay) therefore erodibility is tied to soil properties. On the other hand, many researchers have attempted to develop such equations without much success. One problem is that erodibility is not a single number but a relationship between the erosion rate and the water velocity or the hydraulic shear stress. This erosion function is a curve and it is difficult to correlate a curve to soil properties. The main purpose of this study is to develop correlations between the elements of the erosion function (critical velocity, critical shear stress, slope of the erosion function) with elementary soil properties (plasticity index, mean grain size, unit weight, shear strength, and others). There are many tests to evaluate the erodibility of the soil in laboratory and in situ and to identify the erosion function (i.e. Jet Erosion Test, Erosion Function Apparatus, Hole Erosion Tests, etc.). This study deals with developing correlating equations between erodibility parameters obtained from many years of testing experience with Erosion Function Apparatus (EFA) and geotechnical properties of the soil.