The analysis and classification of soils

Abstract

Most of the Earth’s land surface, and parts of the bed of the sea, are covered with a layer of granular sediments, mainly derived from the breakdown and decomposition of rocks. Where such sediments either remain entirely uncemented, or are so lightly cemented as not to change their essentially particulate nature, or where cemented materials have been broken up by excavation, they are described as soils. It is this particulate or granular nature which distinguishes soils, in the general engineering sense, from rocks.