A comparative study on river sands and M-sands

River sands, which are natural coarse-grained materials, have been generally used extensively in civil engineering construction, either as a component of concrete or as geotechnical infrastructure such as cushion materials and embankment materials. However, recently, manufactured or M-sands are also being used in civil engineering construction. These M-sands are produced through manufacturing processes from some parent rocks which are crushed and powdered, and processed to serve as sands that can be used in construction purposes. This book compares the physical and engineering properties of a natural river sand and of two M sands obtained from two different production sources, one in the state of Tamilnadu and the other in the state of Kerala in India. Grain size distribution, shear box test results and permeability of these sands were compared as obtained from carefully performed series of laboratory tests. Angle of internal friction (φ) of all the sands increased with increasing relative density (Dr). In natural river sand, for a given Dr, finer fractions resulted in higher φ than natural mixes, and in M-sands, finer fractions resulted in lower φ than natural mixes.

Dr. B. R. Phanikumar is a Senior Professor at VIT University, Vellore, India. His main research areas are expansive soils, soft clays and ground improvement. He has to his credit more than 250 publications in various international journals and conferences.Ganesh Meiyappan is a research scholar at VIT. His main research is in ground improvement.