Computer-Controlled Microwave Drying of Potentially Difficult Organic and Inorganic Soils
Abstract
This report focuses on microwave system drying of potentially difficult soils and earth materials, some of which have a history of requiring special treatment for ordinary conventional oven water content determination. Materials tested are gravels, gravelly soils and earth-rock mixtures, dredged materials, fly ash, gypsum rich soils, calcite rich soils, organic clay, peat, and halloysite rich soils. Because specimen sizes too large to be practical for the microwave system would be required for representative samples in earth-rock mixtures, a procedure is outlined to determine water content based on knowledge of earth rock composition. Gravels, dredged materials, organic clay, fly ash, and calcite rich soils are demonstrated to dry satisfactorily in the system using the same procedure as for normal inorganic soils. The system was used to dry materials containing amounts of organic material varying from approx. 2-90%, and it was demonstrated that even though special software was required to dry highly organic soil (peat), the equipment dried these materials satisfactorily. The system failed to properly dry gypsum rich soils, and the development and documentation of this special software are given along with a version of the software for drying inorganic soils written for IBM compatible computers.
Document Details
- Document Type
- Technical Report
- Publication Date
- Dec 01, 1990
- Accession Number
- ADA237487
Entities
People
- Paul A. Gilbert