Virgin compression of structured soils

This paper describes a study of the virgin compression behaviour of both na turally and artificially structured soils under one-dimensional compression or isotropic compression. It is proposed that during virgin compression, t he additional voids ratio sustained by soil structure is inversely proporti onal to the current mean effective stress. The proposed formula has been ve rified for 20 different naturally and artificially structured soils, and it is seen that the proposal describes,well the behaviour of all these soils. Finally, a general discussion on soil structure and its features is presen ted, and the proposed compression equation is extended to describe the comp ression of structured soil along a general stress path.