Resumen

The Andean mountain range was formed through the collision between the Nazca plate and South America, the machín volcano is located in this mountain range (Serna, 2010), which has a significant group of snow and volcanoes along the South American continent , this chain of volcanoes and snows in turn are part of the Pacific fire belt (Serna, 2010), which contains most active and inactive volcanoes of the earth, in the areas surrounding this group of volcanoes can be found Soils formed by the weathering of volcanic ash (Serna, 2010). The machin volcano recorded its last eruption more than 800 years ago and permanently emits gases and ashes that are transported by the air and deposited in the soils near it, it is for this reason that we wanted to know the physical and mechanical properties of a sample of soil from the Morrochusco sector of the Ibagué-Cajamarca road, in order to obtain the maximum resistance to cutting, of the three ash samples of the Cerro Machín volcano by means of a direct cutting test, in order to highlight its use and the response that this land may have in response to requests for infrastructure works that are useful in the region. Keywords: resistance to cutting, machín volcano, volcanic ash.