An examination of the end-over-end shaking technique for measuring soil dispersion

The end-over-end shaking technique has been widely used to provide a measure of soil dispersibility. However, results are dependent on the specific methodology employed. This paper investigates the effect of various physical parameters on the dispersion produced using an end-over-end shaking technique. Significant (P 0.05). To enable better comparison of results from different workers, the following methodology for end-over-end shaking studies is proposed as a standard. The soil sample should be air- dried and crushed to pass through a 2-mm sieve. The air-dried equivalent of 50 g oven-dried soil should then be immersed in 1 L double-deionised water at 20°C within a 1.425-L cylinder (70 mm internal diameter) and shaken end- over-end at 20 rpm for 30 min before measuring the amount of disperse