The Soil Reference Shrinkage Curve

A recently proposed model showed how a clay shrinkage curve is transformed to the soil shrinkage curve at the soil clay content higher than a critical one. The objective of the present work was to generalize this model to the soil clay content lower a critical one. I investigated (i) the reference shrinkage curve, that is, one without cracks; (ii) the superficial layer of aggregates, with changed pore structure compared with the intraaggregate matrix; and (iii) soils with sufficiently low clay content where there are large pores inside the intraaggregate clay (so-called lacunar pores). The methodology is based on detail accounting for different contributions to the soil volume and water content during shrinkage. The key point is the calculation of the lacunar pore volume variance at shrinkage. The reference shrinkage curve is determined by eight physical soil parameters: (1) oven-dried specific volume; (2) maximum swelling water content; (3) mean solid density; (4) soil clay content; (5) oven-dried structural porosity; (6) the ratio of aggregate solid mass to solid mass of intraaggregate matrix; (7) the lacunar factor that characterizes the rate of the lacunar pore volume change with water content; and (8) oven-dried lacunar pore volume. The model was validated using available data. The model predicted value of the slope of the reference shrinkage curve in the basic shrinkage area is equal to unity minus the lacunar factor value, and is between unity and zero in the agreement with observations.