Geomechanics and Engineering

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A simplified directly determination of soil-water retention curve variables

  • Niu, Geng (State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology) ;
  • Shao, Longtan (State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology) ;
  • Guo, Xiaoxia (State Key Laboratory of Structural Analysis for Industrial Equipment, Dalian University of Technology)
  • Received : 2020.07.02
  • Accepted : 2020.11.21
  • Published : 2020.12.10
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Abstract

Soil-water retention curve (SWRC) contains key information for the application of unsaturated soil mechanics principles to engineering practice. The SWRC variables are commonly used to describe the hydro-mechanics of soils. Generally, these parameters are determined using the graphical method which can be time consuming. The SWRC is highly dependent on the pore size distribution (PSD). Theoretically, the PSD obtained by mercury intrusion porosimetry test can be used to determine some SWRC variables. Moreover, the relationship between SWRC and shrinkage curve has been investigated. A new method to determine total SWRC variables directly without curve-fitting procedure is proposed. Substituting the variables into linear SWRC equations construct SWRC. A good agreement was obtained between predicted and measured SWRCs, indicating the validity of the proposed method for unimodal SWRC.

Keywords

Acknowledgement

This research was funded by National Key Laboratory Funding of Independent Research Project (grant number S18406), National Natural Science Foundation of China (grant number 51479023), and National Natural Science Foundation of Liaoning (grant number 2019-ZD-0187).

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