Soil with the potential to shrink or swell are found throughout the United States and in almost all parts of the world. Soils with this shrink-swell potential create difficult performance problems for buildings constructed on these soils because as the soil water content increases, the soil swells and heaves upward and as the soil water content decreases, the soil shrinks and the ground surface recedes and pulls away from the foundation walls.

The effect of expansive soil damage on a local, regional, or national scale is considerable. Among the first persons to attempt to quantify the extent of damage resulting from expansive soil movement were Jones and Holtz (1973), who estimated the annual cost of expansive soil damage in the U.S. -- an estimated $2.2 billion -- to exceed that caused by earthquakes, hurricanes, and floods combined in an average year. Krohn and Slosson (1980) estimated the annual cost of expansive soil damage in the U.S. to be $7.0 billion in 1980. Krohn and Slosson further estimated that damages to single-family and commercial buildings accounted for nearly one-third of the total amount of damage resulting from expansive soils. An earlier damage survey conducted solely in Dallas County, Texas, identified 8,470 residential foundation failures which occurred in only one year (1974), 98 percent of which occurred in expansive soils (Wray, 1989)