Natural soil formation processes involve variable particle size distributions from one location to another, giving rise to an array of soils that transition from one general soil type to another within essentially similar deposits. Characterization of transition soils is something past research overlooked. Evaluation of the unsaturated strength behavior of a transition soil is carried out on mid-Atlantic-native silty sand that was used as backfill material in the construction of section 3 of the U.S. 301. In this work, a suite of suction controlled unsaturated consolidated drained triaxial shear tests are performed and the stress-strain characteristics of the transition silty-sand under different suctions are investigated. It is observed that the shear strength of the tested soil increased 2.5 times when suction changed from 100 kPa to 400 kPa.
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