1. Modelling the behaviour of unsaturated non-active clays in saline environment
- Author
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Wojciech Tomasz Sołowski, Ayman Abed, Gabriele Della Vecchia, Guido Musso, Giulia Scelsi, Polytechnic University of Milan, Department of Civil Engineering, Polytechnic University of Turin, Aalto-yliopisto, and Aalto University
- Subjects
Suction ,Unsaturated clays ,Osmotic suction ,Geology ,Partially saturated ,Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology ,Clay microstructure ,Salinity ,Stress (mechanics) ,Constitutive relations, Osmotic suction, Clay microstructure, Unsaturated clays, Matric suction, Barcelona Basic Model ,Soil water ,Matric suction ,Pore fluid ,Barcelona Basic Model ,Geotechnical engineering ,Saturation (chemistry) ,Expansive ,Constitutive relations - Abstract
Funding Information: The first author acknowledges the financial support provided by the Erasmus+ programme for her stay at Aalto University. Publisher Copyright: © 2021 The Authors The chemical composition of pore fluid and matric suction rule the mechanical behaviour of soils. In case of clays, their fabric changes in line with those variables. Since both the increase in matric suction and salinity cause a transition from an open to a close microstructure of low and medium activity clayey materials, a unique framework could tackle problems where salinity and saturation changes are expected. This paper presents a simple elasto-plastic model capable of reproducing the behaviour of unsaturated clayey soils in saline environments. Changes in the pore fluid composition are addressed through the use of osmotic suction as a variable. The proposed model extends the Barcelona Basic Model for partially saturated soils to consider the effect of osmotic suction. The model, implemented in the Thebes code, is calibrated for Boom Clay. The reproduced tests include mechanical loading at different matric and osmotic suctions in oedometric conditions, as well as more complex chemo-mechanical stress paths. Despite the simplicity of the formulation, the agreement between the experimental results and the simulations is encouraging. It seems that the modelling approach addresses the most important features of partially saturated soils with saline pore fluid which are slightly or moderately expansive.
- Published
- 2021