Studies on swelling of calcium saturated clays in water.

This thesis describes an investigation of the forces causing swelling of Ca-montmorillonite clay in water and salt solutions. Studies on swelling of clay can yield results which are of value to a basic understanding of the behaviour of clay under compression. While the following experiments deal primarily with montmorillonite, most of the concepts will hold for any swelling clay. Good agreement of measured swelling with swelling calculated from osmotic forces of repulsion has been obtained for montmorillonite saturated with monovalent ions, the lack of agreement when the ions are divalent raises interesting questions