Sharif Digital Repository

To investigate the influences of microstructure changes on dilatancy of unsaturated loess at high suctions, a direct shear box device using the vapour equilibrium technique was used. Through conducting two series of direct shear tests on both intact and recompacted loess specimens and also investigating microstructural changes using the mercury intrusion porosim-etry (MIP) technique, a linear increase in dilatancy with suctions ranging from 8 to 230 MPa can be identified at different net stresses. The enhanced dilatancy observed is mainly attributed to desiccation-induced high suctions as the reduction in void ratio due to enhancement of suction was negligible. A macrovoid ratio, eM, may be... 

A conventional triaxial test device was modified to characterize the hydro-mechanical behavior of a loessial soil during isotropic and shear loadings. This device is capable of precise and continuous measurements of water outflow during the application of loading. The tests were performed on "undisturbed" cylindrical specimens, which were taken from loessial deposits in Gorgan, a city in the northeast of Iran. Experimental measurements indicate that the hydro-mechanical behavior of loess is highly affected by the extent of applied mean net stress and the level of suction. During both isotropic and shearing stages of loading, the tested specimens may exhibit collapse, abrupt decrease in... 

The seismic response of soil depends on proper evaluation and use of soil dynamic properties, including shear modulus and damping ratio at various strain levels. Despite extensive studies on the shear modulus and damping ratio of saturated soils, research on the dynamic properties of unsaturated fine-grained soils — especially at high suction — is limited. This study aims to investigate the dynamic properties of loess at a variety of initial states resulting from different specimen preparation techniques (reconstituted, recompacted, and intact) and their evolutions due to suction-induced desiccation. Results of resonant column tests show that at initial states, the specimen preparation... 

The seismic behavior of pile-supported systems has been an active area of research over the past decades. However, focus has mostly been on evaluating the seismic response of structures embedded in either dry or fully saturated soil conditions. In this study, series of dynamic centrifuge tests were conducted to investigate the effects of soil's degree of saturation on the seismic behavior of pile-supported superstructures. The scaled physical model tests were carried out on two distinct pile-mass systems embedded in uniform sand layers. A steady state infiltration technique was used to control matric suction profiles in the sand layer prior to shaking. The obtained results from these... 

A cyclic simple shear device was modified for testing coarse-grained soils at unsaturated conditions. A combined methodology of controlling suction for the practical range of coarse-grained soil water retention curves was adopted. Water head control method was used to accurately control suction within capillary and transition zones of such soils. The axis translation technique, on the other hand, was employed as a complementary approach to reach higher suction values within residual zone. In order to evaluate the performance of the new setup, independent cyclic tests were carried out at various initial suctions including all key points and zones along the primary drying path. The analyses of... 

Thermal loadings in saturated (two-phase) clays induce excess pore water pressure due to the difference in the thermal expansion coefficient of the pore volume and the pore water. The gradual dissipation of the excess pore water pressure causes thermal volume reduction which is known as thermal consolidation. However, thermal consolidation in a three-phase soil system such as unsaturated soil is more sophisticated. In this paper, an analytical model for thermal consolidation around a heat source embedded in unsaturated clay or in calyey soils containing two immiscible fluids is developed based on the effective stress concept. Governing equations, including energy, mass, and momentum balance... 

The stability of unsaturated slopes under seismic loading has become an important issue over the past few years which is the indication of its practical significance in geoengineering. This study aims at exploring the seismic stability of unsaturated sandy clay and silty clayey sand slopes using 2D limit equilibrium analysis for different slope geometries and ground water levels. To this end, the pseudo-static and the displacement-based sliding block Newmark’s approaches are employed for parametric studies by considering the records of the 2003 earthquake that devastated the city of Bam, in the southeast of Iran. In all analyses, the unsaturated state of the soil materials is taken into... 

A modified two-surface critical state plasticity model for saturated and unsaturated soil is presented in this study. The key modification in new model is inclusion of an alternative yield surface used to simulate the behavior of unsaturated soils in addition to corresponding saturated conditions. Moreover, a numerical technique is used to obtain an incremental stress–strain response from loading curves. Modification is applied continuously in each incremental step to return the final stress states and hardening parameters to the yield surface. Results revealed that the adopted modeling approach can predict two independent sets of laboratory unsaturated experiments under various conditions... 

Generally, in most areas, groundwater level is deep and heat sources (e.g., energy piles)are embedded in unsaturated soil media. Therefore, in order to accurately analyze the soil response close to heat sources, both heat and moisture transport in unsaturated soil domain should be considered. Thermal loading changes the moisture content in the porous media. In this study, the energy conservation and mass fluid continuity equations derived from hydrothermal analysis of a partially saturated soil medium are considered in cylindrical coordinate system. To make the analytical solution possible, partial differential equations (PDEs)are turned into ordinary differential equations (ODEs), through... 

Mathematical simulation of non-isothermal multiphase flow in deformable unsaturated porous media is a complicated issue because of the need to employ multiple partial differential equations, the need to take into account mass and energy transfer between phases and because of the non-linear nature of the governing partial differential equations. In this paper, an analytical solution for analyzing a fully coupled problem is presented for the one-dimensional case where the coefficients of the system of equations are assumed to be constant for the entire domain. A major issue is the non-linearity of the governing equations, which is not considered in the analytical solution. In order to...