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)
“And here the precious dust is layd;
Whose purely temper’d Clay was made
So fine, that it the guest betray’d.
Else the soule grew so fast within,
It broke the outward shell of sinne,
And so was hatch’d a Cherubin.”
—Thomas Carew (1589–1639)