## 3 Results
### Dry Sieve Tests
#### 3.2.2 Proper (Ideal) Disintegration Time  
Figures 8 and 9 present the percentage passing through versus sieve sizes for wet and air-dried SSpecimens, respectively of soil 1 prepared at different disintegration times. From Figure 8, the passing percentage for the original soil specimen (without any mixing) was 63% with a 16 mm sieve. After homogenizing the soil specimen at 10 and 16 s disintegration times, it was found that the soil started to have smaller-sized particles, through the breakup of agglomerate particles. The percentage passing through a 16 mm sieve size was significantly increased up to 93% and 100% respectively (Figure 8). This also applied to other sizes of sieve. When the disintegration time increased up to 30 s, it was seen that soil particles started to agglomerate and adhere to each other to form bigger sizes of agglomerated particles. The percentage passing through decreased compared to 10 and 16 s for all sizes of sieve. The percentage passing through was higher compared to the original soil specimen. A similar observation was made with larger sizes of agglomerated particles found when the disintegration time was increased up to 60 s until it became almost like one piece of soil at 120 s disintegration time. The percentage passing through decreased compared to the original soil specimen for all sizes of sieve. Figure 7: Percentage passing through versus sieve size for wet Soil 1 specimen sieved at various times. For the air-dried specimens, Figure 9 shows that the percentages passing through a 16 mm sieve were 98%, 20% and 10% after 17, 30 and 60 s of disintegration time respectively. Figure 8: Percentage passing through versus sieve size for wet specimens of Soil 1 prepared at different disintegration times. Figure 9: Percentage passing through versus sieve size for air-dried specimens of Soil 1 prepared at different disintegration times. Figure 10 shows the percentage passing through versus sieve sizes for wet and air- dried specimens of soil 2 prepared at different disintegration times. For the original soil specimen (without any mixing), it is seen that the pass percentage is 8% at 16 mm sieve size. After homogenizing the soil for 10 s of disintegration time, the passing through a 16 mm sieve size significantly increases up to 88% and 60% for air-dried and wet specimens, respectively. The pass percentage is also significantly increased for the other sizes of sieve. Then, when the disintegration time increases to 13 s, the passing percentage through a 16 mm sieve size is 75 and 33% for air-dried and wet specimens, respectively. With a further increase in disintegration time of up to 16 s, the pass percentage decreases for all sieve sizes to the same percentage as the original soil specimen without any preparation or mixing. Figure 11 presents the pass percentage versus sieve sizes for wet and air-dried specimens of Soil 3 prepared at different disintegration times. For the original soil specimen (without any mixing), it was seen that the specimen consisted of a wide range of agglomerated particles from a few millimeters to about seven centimeters and the passing through a 16 mm sieve size was 50%. After homogenizing the soil at 6 s disintegration time the passing through percentage at 16 mm sieve size increased up to 57% and 85% for wet and air-dried specimens, respectively. Then, when the disintegration time increased to 12-13 s, the percentage of passing through a 16 mm sieve size increased to 80% and 73% for wet and air-dried specimens, respectively. The pass percentage also increased for the other sieve sizes. With further increasing in the disintegration time up to 22 s, the passing through percentage decreased for all sizes of sieve compared to the original soil specimen. Figure 10: Pass percentage versus sieve size for wet and air-dried specimens prepared at different disintegration times for Soil 2.