Soil characteristics are used to evaluate soils that will have structures constructed on them. In the early 1930s, Karl Terzhagi and Arthur Casagrande recognized the need of defining soil plasticity for use in geotechnical engineering applications.Ĭasagrande improved and standardized the experiments, and his methods are still used to measure the liquid, plastic, and shrinkage limits of soils.
History of Atterberg LimitsĪlbert Atterberg, a Swedish chemist and agricultural scientist, was the first to identify the boundaries of soil consistency for the classification of fine-grained soils in 1911.ĭiscovered that plasticity is a distinguishing feature of cohesive (clay and silt) soils and proposed classifying soils with particle sizes of 2m (0.002mm) or less as clays. The water content at which soils transition from one state to another is referred to as the consistency limit or Atterberg’s limit. The Atterberg limits can be used to differentiate between silt and clay, as well as distinct types of silts and clays. The swelling of clay is defined as the amount of water it takes to make the soil’s volume swell.The shrinkage limit is the point at which the soil changes from a rubber like material to a viscous liquid.
