The standard sieving, pipette and hydrometer methods for soil particle size analysis (PSA) have three main drawbacks: procedures are tedious, time-consuming, and the results are protocol-dependent. Laser diffraction PSA delivers rapid results using standardized procedures, but so far it has been difficult to reconcile results with those from standard sedimentation methods. The objective of this study was to develop a protocol that would permit direct usage of laser diffraction PSA and render results compatible with current methods. The protocol was developed using 54 standard soil samples from different textural classes. Regression of the laser diffraction PSA against the hydrometer/pipette method yielded coefficients of determination of 0.92/0.9, 0.92/0.94 and 0.99/0.99, and root mean square errors of 0.04/0.05, 0.07/0.06 and 0.05/0.03 for clay, silt and sand, respectively. These statistics are comparable to those obtained by regressing results of the hydrometer against the sieve and pipette methods.A key factor in securing accurate and precise results was limiting the particle size range of the samples by wet sieving the sand fraction. This created representative samples and stable soil dispersed suspensions, allowing accurate estimations of particle size distribution for clay and silt fractions without empirical transformations. Results obtained with the proposed protocol matched those of standard sedimentation analyses for a wide range of soils, encouraging further adoption of laser diffraction for soil PSA.
Raw data
This Microsoft Excel spreadsheet contains the raw data used in the preparation of the manuscript " MAKING SOIL PARTICLE SIZE ANALYSIS BY LASER DIFFRACTION COMPATIBLE WITH STANDARD SOIL TEXTURE DETERMINATION METHODS"
Giovani Stefani Faé; Felipe Montes; Ekaterina Bazilevskaya; Rodrigo Masip Añó; Armen Kemanian
doi: 10.2136/sssaj2018.10.0385; Date posted: May 04, 2019
The data is presented in three spreadsheets: 1) Laser Diffraction-Sieving Data, 2) Sand Content, 3) Standard Data
1) Laser Diffraction-Sieving Data
Contains the 101 bin sizes of the Mastersizer3000 particle size distribution, ranging from 0.01 μm to 3500 nμm. It also contains one column for each of the samples analyzed using the laser diffraction protocol; each column registers the fraction of the total number of particles analyzed in each bin size. Because the samples were wet sieved to 53μm, most of the columns (samples) have 0 in the bins corresponding to sizes larger than 51.9 (row 69). Nonetheless there are some samples that have a few particles greater than 53μm which corresponds to the physical process of passing the particles trough a nominal 53μm sieve. See Fernlund et al. (2007); Garboczi et al. (2017).
Number of rows: 102
First row: Name of the columns
Rows 2-102: Fraction of the total number of particles analyzed in each bin size expressed as percent (%)
Number of Columns: 55
First Column: Mastersizer 3000 bin sizes (μm)
Columns 2-55: Samples analyzed in the completion of the manuscript
2) Sand Content
Contains one column for each of the samples analyzed using the laser diffraction protocol; each column registers the dry weight of the sand that was captured in the 53μm sieve, and the fraction of the 5 g sample that this weight represents
Number of rows: 3
First row: Name of the columns
Row 2 Dry weight (g) of the sand that was captured in the 53μm sieve
Row 3 Fraction of the 5 g sample that was retained in the 53μm sieve
Number of Columns: 55
First Column: Row names
Columns 2-55: Samples analyzed in the completion of the manuscript
3) Standard Data
Hydrometer and Pipette results for each of the samples analyzed obtained from https://www.naptprogram.org/content/laboratory-results and https://collaborative-testing.com/program-1.php
Number of rows: 55
First row: Name of the columns
Rows 2-55 Samples analyzed in the completion of the manuscript
Number of Columns: 7
First Column: Row names
Columns 2-4: Percent Clay, Silt, Sand of each sample obtained using the Pipette method as reported
Columns 5-7: Percent Clay, Silt, Sand of each sample obtained using the Hydrometer method as reported
DataSSSAJ_doi_10.2136_sssaj2018.10.0385.xlsx