8.4 State of soils on the wet side and on the dry side
of critical
Clays may be normally consolidated or, depending on how far the state is from the
normal consolidation line, lightly or heavily overconsolidated. There is a critical overconsolidation
ratio, shown as a broken line in Fig. 8.7(a), which separates lightly
and heavily overconsolidated soils. (We will see later that this line is below the critical
state line (CSL) which corresponds to states at which soil fails during shearing.)