The climatic variations sometimes entail changes of properties of soil. These changes are observed at microscopic scale and they are evident on the basic properties which directly affect the physical and mechanical properties of soil. In most cases, these alterations depend on the infiltration process which is not a continuous process. When rainfall starts, water infiltrates soil and matric suction decreases but when rainfall stops, soil dries and matric suction can recover, thus the soil undergoes repeated short wetting — drying cycles in which the matric suction varies. As consequence of these cycles, the strength of soil could change and a noticeable increment in deformations can be presented.
Due to this phenomenon is not completely clarified, a series of triaxial tests have been carried out when the material is subject to wetting — drying cycle. During this process Bender Element (BE), Trigger Accelerometer (TA) and cyclic loading by using Triaxial Compression (TC) have been performed in order to understand the internal changes of the material. [This abstract is not included in the PDF]