Preliminary Geotechnical Characterization of Soils at the Southern Part of the Proposed Faculty of Law, Al-Hikmah University Ilorin, South-Western, Nigeria

M. Abdullahi¹ , A.Y. Ojulari² , N.Y. Abdullahi³

Section:Research Paper, Product Type: Isroset-Journal
Vol.4 , Issue.12 , pp.18-35, Dec-2018

CrossRef-DOI:   https://doi.org/10.26438/ijsrms/v4i12.1835

Online published on Dec 31, 2018

Copyright © M. Abdullahi, A.Y. Ojulari, N.Y. Abdullahi . This is an open access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 

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Abstract :
The aim of this research work is to investigate the engineering suitability of soils for foundation purposes within the southern part of the proposed faculty of law (Atere Campus), Al-Hikmah University Ilorin, south-western Nigeria. Geotechnical investigation was carried out using analyses such as grain size distribution, Atterberg limits, specific gravity, bulk density, consolidation test and direct shear box test on nine samples which were collected from three different locations of the study area by the use of trial pits of about 1.6-1.7m depth at an interval of 0.5m. The grain size analysis shows the samples are classified as sand to gravely sand (SC/SM) based on Unified Soil Classification with 0.9% - 69.73 gravel and 30.27- 99.1% sand. The soil samples are above the activity (A) line of the plasticity chart in the zone of inorganic sand (CI). The consolidation test indicates that the soils have low settlement. The results from the direct shear box tests show that the samples have a medium angle of internal friction which ranges from 260-330 with cohesion of 20KPa-40KPa. This means that the foundation design of the area will be shallow foundation and could support moderately light to heavy structures. The soil materials can as well be used in high way construction as a sub-grade material. Also, shear strength analysis was carried out on the samples from different depth and it was discovered that the shear strength increases with depth.

Key-Words / Index Term :
geotechnical, soils, shear strength, foundation, trial pits

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