Abstract
The United States is in the beginning stages of construction for wind farms down its eastern coast. From Maine to the Carolinas wind lease areas are being sold and construction is beginning. In areas of the future wind farms there are known deposits of two problematic soils: calcareous and glauconite soils. Calcareous soils are carbonate rich and created from the death or reproduction of marine micro- and macro-organisms while glauconite is a non-clastic sediment abundant in iron and potassium and formed at soil-water interfaces. Both soils are easily crushable and experience differences in their behavior dependent on their crushed state. Calcareous soils contain hollows and sized particles and have different densities between their coarse and fine (75 um) particles. Glauconite has internal fractures and fissures that aid in the crushability of the soils. A probabilistic model using Weibull survivability statistic is created to study the differences in behavior between solid and hollow soil particles. The behaviors of solid and hollow soil are evident through void ratio and particle size distribution changes. This study shows that it is possible to weaken the soil during crushing due to an increase in the intraparticle void ratio. One-Dimensional compression tests aid in the understanding of crushability of calcareous and glauconite sands. Glauconite will experience different crushing behaviors than typical soils due to their highly fractured nature. When glauconite crushes the plasticity of the soil increases and the change in particle size distribution aids in the understanding of differences in behavior when soil is in its natural and crushed state. Since calcareous sand and fine-grained particles have different densities, their transitional fines content is higher than clastic silica sands. This is investigated by performing constant rate of strain compression tests to study the mechanical and hydraulic responses of a calcareous soil with varying fines contents. Through this work, the differences in behavior of easily crushable marine soils have been determined to better understand these unique and problematics oils and how to construct in them.