Related papers: Experimental unsaturated soil mechanics
This paper synthesizes nearly a decade of research on the coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) behavior of clays and argillaceous rocks. Drawing from experimental observations, numerical model development, and field-scale simulations, it…
We study rain water infiltration and drainage in a dry model sandy soil with superabsorbent hydrogel particle additives by measuring the mass of retained water for non-ponding rainfall using a self-built 3D laboratory set-up. In the pure…
Wetting and drying of a rigid substrate by a Lennard-Jones fluid in molecular dynamics simulations is reported. The size of the substrate particles, being smaller than the fluid particles in former simulations, is now taken to be equal to,…
Water evaporation is critically important for hydrogels in open-air applications, but theoretically modeling is difficult due to the complicated intermolecular interactions and sustained deformation. In this work, we construct a simplified…
When dealing with unsaturated wet granular materials, a fundamental question is: what is the effect of capillary cohesion on the bulk flow and yield behavior? We inwestigate the dense flow rheology of unsaturated granular materials through…
It has been proposed recently a new incremental modelling to describe the mechanics of soil. It is based on two parameters called the pseudo Young modulus E=1/Co and the pseudo Poisson coefficient n, which both evolve during compression.…
The soil water retention curve (SWRC) is the most commonly used relationship in the study of unsaturated soil. In this paper, the effect of porosity on the SWRC is investigated by numerically modeling unsaturated soil using the Shan-Chen…
Shells, when confined, can deform in a broad assortment of shapes and patterns, often quite dissimilar to what is produced by their flat counterparts (plates). In this work we discuss the morphological landscape of shells deposited on a…
A 2D contact dynamics model is proposed as a microscopic description of a collapsing suspension/soil to capture the essential physical processes underlying the dynamics of generation and collapse of the system. Our physical model is…
Multi-phase flows encountered in nature or in industry, exhibit non trivial rheological properties, that can be understood better thanks to model materials and appropriate rheometers. Here, we use model unsaturated granular materials:…
Basic issues of the general model-building framework of the mechanics of complex bodies are discussed. Attention is focused on the representation of the material elements, the conditions for the existence of ground states in conservative…
Improving the accuracy of soil moisture estimation is required for advancing irrigation scheduling and water conservation efforts. Central to this task are soil hydraulic parameters, which govern moisture dynamics but are rarely known…
The microscopic description of the local structure of water remains an open challenge. Here, we adopt an agnostic approach to understanding water's hydrogen bond network using data harvested from molecular dynamics simulations of an…
Investigation into the physics of foaming has traditionally been focused on aqueous systems. Non-aqueous foams, by contrast, are not well understood, but have been the subject of a recent surge in interest motivated by the need to manage…
We visualize the formation of fingered flow in dry model sandy soils under different raining conditions using a quasi-2d experimental set-up, and systematically determine the impact of soil grain diameter and surface wetting property on…
The soil compaction by vehicles is a major factor responsible for physical degradation of cultivated soils. Uniaxial confined compression tests are usually performed to characterise the compaction properties of soil. Two main forms of…
In this paper we introduce an optimal control approach to Richards' equation in an irrigation framework, aimed at minimizing water consumption while maximizing root water uptake. We first describe the physics of the nonlinear model under…
Soil salinization is a major cause of soil degradation and hampers plant growth. For soils saturated with saline water, the evaporation of water induces accumulation of salt near the top of the soil. The remaining liquid gets an…
Structures with artificial mechanical properties, often called mechanical metamaterials, exhibit divergent yet tunable performance. Various types of mechanical metamaterials have been proposed, which harness light or magnetic interactions,…
As a typical multiphase fluid flow process, drainage in porous media is of fundamental interest in nature and industrial applications. During drainage processes in unsaturated soils and porous media in general, saturated clusters, in which…