Abstract: With the rapid development of urbanization, the heavy metal pollution of industrialization becomes increasingly serious. Zinc pollution is one of the common industrial pollutants in China. Currently, research efforts about soil pollution are mainly paid to change a single feature of contaminated soil, and few researches have been done on the correlations among different characteristics of contaminated soil. The contaminated soil samples of specified pollution concentrations were prepared using the unique Yangtze River floodplain silty clay of Nanjing. The variations of basic physical properties such as liquid and plastic limits, pH value and particle size with zinc pollution concentration are determined. The effect of curing time is also analyzed. It is shown that with the increase of zinc concentration, the liquid and plastic limits, silt content and pH value of the contaminated soil decrease, while the clay content and plasticity index of the soil tend to increase. In addition, the variations of physical indices with the curing time are obtained. The improved round four-electrode Miller Soil Box is used to determine the electrical resistivity of soil sample. The correlations among electrical resistivity and moisture content, void ratio, saturation degree, pollution concentration, and other state parameters are analyzed, and the change of electrical resistivity with the curing time is discussed. Based on the contamination-induced changes of soil physical properties, the correlations among electrical resistivity, liquid limit, plasticity limit, pH value and soil composition are established.

Key words: zinc pollution, physical index, electrical resistivity, laboratory test