Abstract: Silty clay from Nanjing city was used as parent soil for preparing diesel-contaminated soils with various moisture content and diesel content. The soil resistivity of diesel-contaminated soils was then determined by a Miller Soil Box to estimate the variation of the resistivity with moisture content， diesel content and saturation degree. Results indicate that soil resistivity increases with decreased moisture content and saturation degree for a given diesel content， which can be expressed using a series of power functions. The soil resistivity increases linearly with increased diesel content for a given moisture content. A new characteristic parameter， volume moisture content， is developed to better understand the influence of water- diesel interaction on the soil resistivity. It is found that the soil resistivity increases linearly with an increase in the volume moisture content for a given saturation. Orthogonal analysis was performed to rank the importance of influence factors on the soil resistivity， indicating the following order: degree of saturation > water content > oil content.

Key words: diesel contaminated soil, electrical resistivity characteristic, influence factor, volume moisture content, orthogonal analysis