Particle packing and organization of the textural porosity in clay–silt–sand mixtures

The packing of elementary particles in soil largely determines the properties that depend on the textural soil pore space, but is studied little. The relations between packing and size and nature of soil particles were studied using fractions of clay, silt and sand, mixed when wet and then dried. Ternary mixtures (clay:silt:sand) were compared with binary mixtures (clay:silt, clay:sand). The pore space of the mixtures was studied using mercury porosimetry and scanning electron microscopy. In all the mixtures the textural pore space was divided into two compartments: (1) lacunar pores due to the presence of skeleton particles and to the shrinkage of the clay phase between these particles, and (2) the clay–fabric pores due to the packing of the clay. In the ternary mixtures, lacunar pores could be divided into two classes: (1) those due to sand particles within the clay–slit phase considered as a single phase, and (2) those due to silt particles within this same phase. For certain mixtures, lacunar pores, referred to as hidden lacunar pores, were not interconnected but were occluded. This occurred both for hidden pores caused by the presence of sand and occluded by the clay–slit phase, and for hidden pores caused by the presence of silt and occluded by the clay phase. The relations between these types of textural pores and the proportions of different size fractions in the mixtures provide guidelines for making optimum use of the particle-size characteristics of the soil to determine its properties.