Shear strength and retention models of a partially saturated riverbank silty soil

Shear Strength of Soil

One of the most important and the most controversial engineering properties of soil is its shear strength or ability to resist sliding along internal surfaces within a mass. The stability of a cut, the slope of an earth dam, the foundations of structures, the natural slopes of hillsides and other structures built on soil depend upon the shearing resistance offered by the soil along the probable...

Deformation and localization analysis of partially saturated soil

Deformation and localization analysis is a crucial issue and has thus been intensively investigated in the last decades. However, in contrast to solid mechanical problems, geotechnical applications do not only concern a single solid material, the soil, but they also affect the pore-fluids, water and air, and, consequently, the coupling of the solid deformation with the pore-fluid flow. As a res...

Quantifying colloid retention in partially saturated porous media

[1] The transport of colloid-contaminant complexes and colloid-sized pathogens through soil to groundwater is of concern. Visualization and quantification of pore-scale colloid behavior will enable better description and simulation of retention mechanisms at individual surfaces, in contrast to breakthrough curves which only provide an integrated signal. We tested two procedures for quantifying ...

Numerical Analysis of Infiltration into Partially Saturated Soil Slopes

Shear Strength of a Soil Containing Vegetation Roots

Vegetation can signiˆcantly contribute to stabilise sloping terrain by reinforcing the soil: this reinforcement depends on the morphological characteristics of the root systems and the tensile strength of single roots. This paper describes an investigation on the reinforcing eŠect of soil-root matrix in the laboratory using a modiˆed large shear box apparatus (300 mm×300 mm). Four diŠerent spec...