Specific Gravity: It is ratio of unit weight in air of a given volume of soil solids at a specific temperature to unit weight in air of an equal volume of distilled water at same temperature.
Determination of specific gravity by pycnometer test:
Procedure:
i. Clean the pycnometer bottle and dry it. Take the weight of empty pycnometer with conical cap as ‘W1’ gm.
ii. Oven dry the given soil sample passing through 4.75 mm and retained on 75 micron IS sieve, in oven at temperature 105-1100C for 24 hours to get dry soil.
iii. Place this soil sample about 150-200 gms in the pycnometer and take its weight as ‘W2’ gm.
iv. Now add the distilled water to half of height of pycnometer and stirrer it using glass rod, so that entrapped air will be removedfrom soil.
v. Fill the distilled water up to top of conical cap using pipette.
vi. Take the weight of pycnometer filled with distilled water as ‘W3’ gm.
vii. Remove all content from the pycnometer bottle. Wash and clean it with water.
viii. Fill the pycnometer bottle with distilled water only up to top of conical cap.
ix. Take the weight of pycnometer completely filled with water as W4 gm.
x. Calculate the specific gravity G, as
xi. Repeat all above steps two more times to calculate average specific gravity of given soil sample.