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This chapter considers the engineering behaviour of rock and soil materials that consist largely of clay mineral grains, together with minor amounts of other minerals. As discussed in Chapter 1, the term clay may mean a material made of clay-sized grains (smaller than 2 µm or 0.002 mm) or of grains consisting of clay minerals (see Chapter 2). Grains smaller than 2 µm may be clay minerals or other materials such as finely ground quartz or rock flour. Clay mineral grains may be larger than 2 µm and they are often bound into silt-sized (0.002-0.06 mm) aggregates. The Chapter concentrates on the properties of the material relevant to the exploitation and uses of excavated or extracted clays and mudrocks, rather than those of soil and rock masses in the ground, which are outside the scope of this report.
The behaviour of clays depends on their particle size distribution, mineralogy and moisture content. In
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