TY - JOUR
T1 - Modelling the water retention behaviour of anisotropic soils
AU - Zhou, Chao
AU - Chen, Rui
N1 - Funding Information:
This work is supported by the National Science Foundation of China through the research grant 52022004 . The authors also would like to thank the Research Grants Council (RGC) of the HKSAR for providing financial support through the grants 16210420 and AoE/E-603/18 . The support from Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province (Grant No. 2018A030310018 ) is also acknowledged.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 Elsevier B.V.
PY - 2021/8
Y1 - 2021/8
N2 - Water retention curve (WRC) is an important parameter for unsaturated soils. It is greatly affected by the anisotropy of pore structure, as supported by experimental results in the literature. So far, however, the mechanism and theoretical modelling of anisotropy effects have not been investigated. These two issues were explored in this study based on two-dimensional analysis of soil pores, while were approximated as a series of ellipses for simplicity. According to experimental results in the literature, the pores of anisotropic specimen are more elongated than those of isotropic specimen on average. The elongated pore has a higher water retention ability than the round pore when they have the same area. As a consequence, the water retention ability of anisotropic specimen is higher than that of isotropic specimen. On the basis of this mechanism, a new WRC model was proposed for isotropic and anisotropic soils. To verify the new model, it was applied to simulate the WRCs of three soils with isotropic and anisotropic pore structures. Measured and calculated results were well matched with the coefficient of determination (R2) in the range of 0.89 to 0.99 and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) ranging from 0.009 to 0.073. It is convincingly demonstrated that the new model is able to capture the influence of anisotropy on WRC.
AB - Water retention curve (WRC) is an important parameter for unsaturated soils. It is greatly affected by the anisotropy of pore structure, as supported by experimental results in the literature. So far, however, the mechanism and theoretical modelling of anisotropy effects have not been investigated. These two issues were explored in this study based on two-dimensional analysis of soil pores, while were approximated as a series of ellipses for simplicity. According to experimental results in the literature, the pores of anisotropic specimen are more elongated than those of isotropic specimen on average. The elongated pore has a higher water retention ability than the round pore when they have the same area. As a consequence, the water retention ability of anisotropic specimen is higher than that of isotropic specimen. On the basis of this mechanism, a new WRC model was proposed for isotropic and anisotropic soils. To verify the new model, it was applied to simulate the WRCs of three soils with isotropic and anisotropic pore structures. Measured and calculated results were well matched with the coefficient of determination (R2) in the range of 0.89 to 0.99 and the root-mean-square error (RMSE) ranging from 0.009 to 0.073. It is convincingly demonstrated that the new model is able to capture the influence of anisotropy on WRC.
KW - Anisotropy
KW - Pore shape
KW - Unsaturated soil
KW - Water retention
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85105337464&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126361
DO - 10.1016/j.jhydrol.2021.126361
M3 - Journal article
AN - SCOPUS:85105337464
SN - 0022-1694
VL - 599
JO - Journal of Hydrology
JF - Journal of Hydrology
M1 - 126361
ER -