1. Relationships and correlations in soils: general information

1.1 Origin of relationships and correlations in soils

While it is difficult, if not impossible, to give a quantitative theoretical justification for the existence of relationships between the properties of a natural soil mass, it is easy to admit that the various parameters of a given soil must have relationships: deformability such as shear strength or permeability obviously depend on the shape and nature of the particles, the density of their stacking, the quantity of water present in the pores.... What's more, within the same category of parameters - strength parameters, for example - there are clearly relationships between the parameters measured in different types of in-situ or laboratory tests, even if these cannot be expressed explicitly. And if strength parameters depend on...