Characterization of cohesion, friction and sensitivity of two hardsetting soils from Zimbabwe

Hardsetting soils are defined as those which develop very high strength with little observable structure when they dry, but lose much of their strength when wet. Sandy loam soils (haplic lixisol) which showed typical hardsetting behaviour in the field were identified in a small-scale farming are in Zimbabwe. They were too hard to cultivate when dry, and produced a cloudy structure when plowed by a tractor in a slightly moist state. Samples of two sandy loam topsoils were collected, prepared at different water contents varying from saturated to field-dry and tested for stress-deformation and shear strength behavior in a direct shear box. For both soils at water contents above 10 g 100 g⁻¹, the stress-deformation curves are of the plastic material type with continually increasing shear stress with deformation. At water contents less than 10 g 100 g⁻¹, curves associated with more brittle material behavior resulted, with a peak shear stress reached at 3–4 mm deformation followed by a considerable loss in strength. At nearly all of the water contents, the angle of friction was 34–37° for both soils, but cohesion changed from nearly zero at saturation to well over 100 kPa in the field-dry state. The contribution of matric tension alone to soil cohesion is more than enough to account for the observed increases in strength on soil drying, and the potential role of soluble silicate cementing agents does not appear to be a factor in the case of these two soils.