Engineering behaviour of soils contaminated with different pollutants

The basic concept of soil, water and air relationships within a soil environment must be considered to allow a more complete understanding of the behaviour of soils. This soil behaviour is further modified in the presence of pollutants, which find their way into soils through the disposal of large quantities of wastes into the land. The pollutants may alter the exchangeable ions held by clays, the nature of pore fluid, the organic matter content of soils etc., affecting the soil properties. The effects of these alterations on the volume change, strength and permeability characteristics of clays are discussed in this paper. The variations in the properties are micro–mechanistically explained.