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:
“An expansive life, one not constrained by four walls, requires as well an expansive pocket.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“Protoplasm, simple or nucleated, is the formal basis of all life. It is the clay of the potter: which, bake it and paint it as he will, remains clay, separated by artifice, and not by nature from the commonest brick or sun-dried clod.”
—Thomas Henry Huxley (1825–1895)