In slope engineering, soils are commonly at unsaturated state. The question of how to apply unsaturated soil mechanics theory to the slope stability analysis has become a hot spot in today’s geotechnical engineering research. Based on the experimental research of how shear strength of residual soil varies with water content, reasonable computation modules can be created. By using limit equilibr...

The lowering of the groundwater table causes the area above the water table to become unsaturated and capillary phenomena to appear in this zone. This means that the bearing capacity of shallow footings will be influenced by capillary stress or matric suction. In this research, the effect of groundwater table lowering on the bearing capacity of a shallow square model footing on dense sand has b...

It is widely known that rainfall induces a rise of the groundwater level and an decrease in matric suction (negative pore water pressure) that results in slope failure. However, in many situations where shallow failures are concerned, it has been noted that there is not much evidence of a rise in the groundwater level sufficient to trigger the observed slope failures. Instead, the failures have...

a pressure-based coupled heat and mass transfer model was used to simulate temperature and soil suction in a drying process within a clay soil column. closed form functions were used for all parameters needed in the governing equations. model predictions were compared with experimental data using the mean relative percentage deviation method. thermocouples and mini-gypsum blocks were used t...

In the content of this study, non-linear consolidation behavior of unsaturated soils was investigated. In this respect a non linear differential equation for consolidation has been proposed. This proposed differential equation and its solutions enlighten both the diffusive characteristics and the time rate of settlement of soils. Besides, this study also enables to perform the matric suction ca...

to measure soil water content (or soil matric suction) in thin layers of about 30mm, conventional gypsum blocks are not suitable. to carry out the task, mini-gypsum blocks were constructed using plaster of paris in an innovative fashion. a power relationship was found between the soil water content and the mini-gypsum blocks’ readings in kω. the calibration results showed that readings of m...