Abstract Soil behavior during compaction is not completely understood due to the difficulty of observing principal state variables during this process. Determination of stress paths and failure envelopes occurring during compaction is challenging due to limitations during determination of principal stresses. The development of a new one-dimensional compaction device designed to allow direct measurement of axial and radial stresses provides an innovative testing procedure that allows analysis of the evolution of state variables of soils subjected to compaction. This methodology is presented through the analysis of fine-grained soils subjected to cyclic compaction together with the analysis of the moisture effect over the stress ratio. As variations with loading cycles are observed, the results allow inference of ratios between horizontal and vertical stresses (K) as non-unique values. Yield stresses and failure envelopes obtained from compaction stress paths are analyzed considering the effect of unsaturated undrained conditions.