Modeling the combined effect of initial density and temperature on the soil–water characteristic curve of unsaturated soils

Abstract The soil–water characteristic curve (SWCC) plays an important role in solving the stability and deformation problems of unsaturated soils. In many practical situations, soils are usually experienced by both deformations thermal conditions. this interest, paper proposes a simple effective model to predict combined effect initial density temperature on SWCC be able quantify changes thermal-hydro-mechanical behavior first step, density-dependent is presented using translation principle between particle-size distribution curve. second part, non-isothermal proposed SWCC. key considering five different temperature-dependent functions, which surface tension, contact angle, expansion, void ratio, water density. On basis 22 data sets volume change, study also developed further theoretical correlation ratio that directly related soil plasticity. It was observed value increases as plasticity increases, there nonlinear relationship index ratio. Because this, with high more susceptible caused fluctuations than low A coupled mechanical–thermal then produced capable separately or simultaneously validated against several test available literature. results show has good performance predicting variation arbitrary