Expansive soils are those that expand when hydrated, and shrink when theywere drying. These soil movements cause extensive damage to buildings, roads,pipelines, and other structures and the repair costs are estimated to be billion dollarsannually. Expansive soils cover across most of the continents in the world, includingseveral regions in the Saudi Arabia. For example, the regions including Tabuk, Al-Hafuf, Al-Qatif and Al-Ghatt have expansive soils and several infrastructure problemswere reported in these regions. A research study was conducted at the King SaudUniversity to characterize the severity of problem natures of these soils. Soil samplesfrom these regions were collected and cataloged and these soils were subjected to amultitude of geotechnical related swell and shrink characterization studies. Threedimensional swell and linear shrinkage bar tests were conducted on these soil samplesat targeted moisture contents to measure their volume change potentials. Severitynature of these expansive soils is then characterized based on an establishedswell/shrinkage ranking method practiced in the expansive soils literature. This paperpresents a summary of these results and ranking assessments on the four expansivesoils.
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