How spatial variability of initial porosity and fines content affects internal erosion in soils

Jie Yang (1, 2) , Zhen-Yu Yin (2, 3) , Pierre-Yves Hicher (2) , Farid Laouafa (1)

1 INERIS - Institut National de l'Environnement Industriel et des Risques
2 GeM - Institut de Recherche en Génie Civil et Mécanique
3 POLYU - The Hong Kong Polytechnic University [Hong Kong]

Internal erosion occurs when fines are pulled off by seepage forces and transported throughout the matrix of soil particles, which results in the degradation of soil strength. This phenomenon has been widely studied experimentally and numerically over the last few decades. In fact, soil nature is highly variable in space and then heterogenous in magnitude [10]. At the present time, few studies have been conducted to analyze the influence of variations of soil initial state (i.e. the initial porosity and the initial fraction of fines content) on the internal erosion behaviors. In this paper, a thermodynamically consistent continuum model of internal erosion is combined with the random field theory to investigate the erosion behavior of soil with spatially variable initial state of soil in one-dimensional condition.

Domains: Earth Sciences

Jie Yang, Zhen-Yu Yin, Pierre-Yves Hicher, Farid Laouafa. How spatial variability of initial porosity and fines content affects internal erosion in soils. China-Europe Conference on Geotechnical Engineering, Aug 2018, Vienna, Austria. pp.439-443, ⟨10.1007/978-3-319-97112-4_99⟩. ⟨ineris-03239662⟩