Expansive clay is a clay that is prone to large volume changes that are directly related to changes in water content.
The mineral make-up of this type of soil is responsible for the moisture retaining capabilities. Soils with smectite clay minerals, including montmorillonite, have the most dramatic swelling properties. Expansive soils typically contain one or more of these clay minerals: montmorillonite, smectite, bentonite and illite.
Mitigation of the effects of expansive clay on structures built in areas with expansive clays is a major challenge in geotechnical engineering.
Famous quotes containing the words expansive and/or clay:
“The expansive nature of truth comes to our succor, elastic, not to be surrounded. Man helps himself by larger generalizations. The lesson of life is practically to generalize; to believe what the years and the centuries say against the hours; to resist the usurpation of particulars; to penetrate to their catholic sense.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am sure my bones would not rest in an English grave, or my clay mix with the earth of that country. I believe the thought would drive me mad on my death-bed could I suppose that any of my friends would be base enough to convey my carcass back to her soil. I would not even feed her worms if I could help it.”
—George Gordon Noel Byron (1788–1824)