Sharif Digital Repository

During preliminary investigation phase of the national Chabahar-Zahedan railway line, serious geotechnical problems including non-uniform settlements, tensile cracks, and local collapse were reported in parts of the path near the coastline. A follow-up field investigation revealed that the in-situ soil at construction site has a metastable structure being sensitive to saturation and loading. Therefore, a comprehensive series of physical, chemical, electro-chemical, and geotechnical tests were conducted to classify and characterize the soil properties and behavior in its natural state. The natural soil was classified as a clayey loess with moderately dispersive to dispersive characteristics.... 

Dispersive soils, as one of the main categories of problematic soils, can be found in some parts of the earth, such as the eastern-south of Iran, nearby the Gulf of Oman. One of the most important factors enhancing the dispersive potential is the existence of dissolved salts in the soil water. The main objective of this study is to explore the influence of water salinity on the instability of a railway embankment due to rainfall infiltration. In order to achieve this goal, the embankment resting on a dispersive stratum is numerically modeled and subjected to transient infiltration flow. The effect of dispersion is simplified through variations in the soil-water retention curve with salinity.... 

Soil deposits may experience different hydraulic states in terms of suction (φ) and saturation degree (Sr) while being subjected to large strain caused by dynamic loading during earthquakes. This phenomenon was investigated by considering the effects of initial φ, initial (Sr, sample preparation method, drainage condition, and cycle number (N) on dynamic properties. Shear modulus (G) and damping ratio (D) were specifically studied for unsaturated sand using a modified cyclic simple shear device for all zones of Soil Water Retention Curve (SWRC). Results revealed the relative significance of both φ and Sr in relation to SWRC on observed trends in G and D. Based on the analysis of some results... 

Real-time measurement of soil water pressure has been recognized as an essential part of investigating water ow in unsaturated soils. Tensiometry, amongst different measuring techniques, is a common method for direct evaluation of water pressure. However, the lower limit of measurable water pressure by a conventional tensiometer becomes even more limited by increasing its length in the vertical installation. This paper describes the development of a Vacuum-Refilled Tensiometer (VRT) for monitoring soil water pressure independent of installation depth. This is achieved by fixing the distance between pressure sensor and ceramic cup together with incorporating an ancillary vacuumre filling... 

As a non-invasive method, photographic imaging techniques offer some interesting potentials for characterization of soil moisture content in unsaturated porous media, enabling mapping at very fine resolutions in both space and time. Although less explored, the wealth of soil moisture data provided by photographic imaging is also appealing for the estimation of unsaturated soil hydraulic parameters through inverse modeling. However, imaging data have some unique characteristics, including high susceptibility to noise, which can negatively affect the parameter estimation process. In this study a sequential data assimilation approach is developed to simultaneously update soil moisture content... 

Slip along fractures or hydrothermal alternation may lead to formation of weak layers of soils intercalated between the existing rock layers. In this situation, characterization of the behavior of rock fractures requires consideration of a complicated interaction of mechanical properties and geometrical characteristics of the fracture, coupled together with the properties of infill materials. Of the most important parameters which may considerably affect the behavior of an infilled fractured rock are the hydraulic properties of the infill material. These properties reflect the water retention ability of the infill material and determine the meniscus arrangements between the particles. This... 

Fully coupled flow-deformation analysis of deformable multiphase porous media saturated by several immiscible fluids has attracted the attention of researchers in widely different fields of engineering. This paper presents a new numerical tool to simulate the complicated process of two-phase fluid flow through deforming porous materials using a mesh-free technique, called element-free Galerkin (EFG) method. The numerical treatment of the governing partial differential equations involving the equilibrium and continuity equations of pore fluids is based on Galerkin’s weighted residual approach and employing the penalty method to introduce the essential boundary conditions into the weak forms.... 

Dynamic compaction (DC) is a popular soil improvement method that is extensively used worldwide. DC treatment design is usually carried out based on past experiences and empirical relations. To establish a rational design approach, all important factors affecting the DC process should be taken into account. In this paper, a finite element code is developed for modeling the impact behavior of dry and moist granular soils. The code is verified with the results of some centrifuge tests. Several analyses were conducted in order to study the effects of energy/momentum per drop, tamper base radius, and number of drops on compaction degree, compacted depth, and extension of the improved zone in the... 

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... 

Evapotranspiration is one of the main components of water and energy balance. In this study, we compare two ET products, suitable for regional analysis at high spatial resolution: The recent WaPOR product developed by FAO and METRIC algorithm. WaPOR is based on ETLook, which is a two-source model and relies on microwave images. WaPOR is unique as it has no limitation under cloudy days, but METRIC is limited by clouds. METRIC and WaPOR are more sensitive to land surface temperature and soil moisture, respectively. Using two years (2010 and 2014) of data over Lake Urmia basin, we show that in most areas, ET from METRIC is higher than WaPOR and the difference has an ascending trend with the... 

Laboratory investigation on the influence of solute concentration on the soil water-retention curve (SWRC) and volumetric behaviour of expansive soils has received much attention in recent years due to increasing environmental pollution. However, most studies only considered applying wetting or drying path with almost no attention to hydraulic hysteresis. Furthermore, these studies have focused on examining expansive soils and only marginal effort has been devoted to collapsible soils. Therefore, the main objective of this study is to systematically explore the SWRC and shrinkage characteristics of an artificially made collapsible soil at various molar concentrations. The tests were... 

Real-time measurement of soil water pressure has been recognized as an essential part of investigating water ow in unsaturated soils. Tensiometry, amongst di erent measuring techniques, is a common method for direct evaluation of water pressure. However, the lower limit of measurable water pressure by a conventional tensiometer becomes even more limited by increasing its length in the vertical installation. This paper describes the development of a Vacuum-Re lled Tensiometer (VRT) for monitoring soil water pressure independent of installation depth. This is achieved by xing the distance between pressure sensor and ceramic cup together with incorporating an ancillary vacuum-re lling assembly... 

Irrigation is not well represented in land surface, hydrological, and climate models. One way to account for irrigation is by assimilating satellite soil moisture data that contains irrigation signal with land surface models. In this study, the irrigation detection ability of SMAP enhanced 9 km and SMAP-Sentinel 1 (SMAP-S1), 3 km and 1 km soil moisture products are evaluated using the first moment (mean) and the second moment (variability) of soil moisture data. The SMAP enhanced 9 km soil moisture product lacks irrigation signals in an irrigated plain south of Urmia Lake, whereas SMAP-S1 products record irrigation signal in soil moisture variability. Despite observing higher variability... 

Accurate implementation of river interactions with subsurface water is critical in large-scale hydrologic models with a constant horizontal grid resolution when models apply kinematic wave approximation for both hillslope and river channel flow. The size of rivers can vary greatly in the model domain, and the implemented grid resolution is too coarse to accurately account for river interactions. Consequently, the flow velocity is underestimated when the width of the rivers is much narrower than the selected grid size. This leads to inaccuracy and uncertainties in calculations of water quantities. In addition, the rate of exfiltration and infiltration between the river and the subsurface may... 

One of the main challenges in arid and semi-arid regions is the lack of water for various purposes such as industrial and agricultural applications. The problem is even more significant in traditional agriculture. The geographical location, climatic conditions, average annual rainfall, vegetation, air pollution and turbidity, and canopy of plants are important and lead to different water consumption in plants. Therefore, proper water consumption in agriculture in most countries leads to food security and a better supply of crops. In this research, we propose a fuzzy system that has eight inputs and seven outputs. Inputs include soil moisture, relative humidity, air temperature, wind speed,... 

A simple conceptual rainfall–runoff model is proposed for the estimation of groundwater balance components in complex karst aquifers. In the proposed model the effects of memory length of different karst flow systems of base-flow, intermediate-flow, and quick-flow and also time variation of recharge area (RA) during a hydrological year were investigated. The model consists of three sub-models: soil moisture balance (SMB), epikarst balance (EPB), and groundwater balance (GWB) to simulate the daily spring discharge. The SMB and EPB sub-models utilize the mass conservation equation to compute the variation of moisture storages in the soil cover and epikarst, respectively. The GWB sub-model... 

The rapid shrinkage of Lake Urmia over the past two decades has raised serious environmental concerns. Several restoration plans have been proposed to reduce agricultural water consumption to supply a remarkable fraction of the lake's environmental flow requirement. However, an accurate and realistic evaluation of the effectiveness of these plans in reducing agricultural water consumption across the basin is still poorly understood. This study assessed the water-saving potential of agricultural alteration in a snow-dominated catchment in the Lake Urmia Basin. In particular, we explored the impact of crop pattern alteration via reducing the cultivation area and employing different irrigation...