Estimation of the wetting induced settlement of loess soils from the wetting soil-water characteristic curve.

Collapsible loess soils, known for their significant volume reduction upon the wetting, pose critical challenges in the geotechnical engineering. The estimation of the wetting-induced settlement is crucial for the foundation design and the determination of the negative skin friction on the pile. In this paper, a new method is proposed to estimate the wetting induced collapse from the wetting soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) and the index properties of the loess soils.