Contenido Partial Saturation in Compacted Soils

Compacted soils are relevant to many geotechnical applications, from earth dams to infrastructure embankments, nuclear waste disposal and rammed-earth buildings. Every geotechnical structure made of compacted soils will include sections that remain partly saturated at least for a period of its service life. Improved understanding of this fast growing area can contribute to the improved design of earth structures/fills by maximizing the use of locally sourced soils, with consequent gains in safety, cost and sustainability of future building practice.

The sixteenth Géotechnique Symposium in Print focused on the study of compacted unsaturated soils, which are at the core of geotechnics and have been at the forefront of research for many years, providing a unique scientific forum for the exchange of the latest knowledge and best practice between academia and industry. This book brings together all the Symposium papers from leading international researchers, published in Geotechnique, the keynote speeches presented at the Symposium, at the Institution of Civil Engineers on 20 June 2011, and a selection of questions posed by delegates during the Symposium, together with answers from presenters.

Partial Saturation in Compacted Soils provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in unsaturated soil mechanics, ranging from material testing to modelling and analysis of engineering boundary value problems, providing further insight into the rapidly developing topic of unsaturated soil mechanics and its application to compacted fills and serving as an invaluable reference for engineers and researchers for years to come.

Contents

Keynote speeches
Compacted soil behaviour: initial state, structure and constitutive modelling
E.E. Alonso, N.M. Pinyol and A. Gens

The assessment of Old Railway Embankments - Time for a Change?
A.S. O'Brien

Session 1: Material characterization

Papers
Effects of the maximum soil aggregates size and cyclic wetting-drying on the stiffness of a lime-treated clayey soil
A.M. Tang, M.N. Vu and Y.-J. Cui

Technical Note
Some aspects of the behaviour of compacted soils along wetting paths
S. Taibi, J.M. Fleureau, N. Abou-Bekr, M.I. Zerhouni, A. Benchouk, K. Lachgueur and H. Souli

Session 2: Experimental observation and modelling

Papers
An insight into the water retention properties of compacted clayey soils
E. Romero, G. Della Vecchia and C. Jommi

Hydromechanical behaviour of compacted granular expansive mixtures: experimental and constitutive study
E.E. Alonso, E. Romero and C. Hoffmann

Experimental observations of the stress regime in unsaturated compacted clay when laterally confined
J.L. Boyd and V. Sivakumar

Session 3: Benchmarking of techniques and models

Benchmark of constitutive models for unsaturated soils
F. D’Onza, D. Gallipoli, S. Wheeler, F. Casini, J. Vaunat, N. Khalili, L. Laloui, C. Mancuso, D. Mašín, M. Nuth, J.-M. Pereira and R. Vassallo

Benchmark of experimental techniques for measuring and controlling suction
A. Tarantino, D. Gallipoli, C.E. Augarde, V. De Gennaro, R. Gomez, L. Laloui, C. Mancuso, G. El Mountassir, J.J. Munoz, J.-M. Pereira, H. Peron, G. Pisoni, E. Romero, A. Raveendiraraj, J.C. Rojas, D.G. Toll, S. Tombolato and S. Wheeler

Session 4: Application to engineering problems and case studies

Hydromechanical behaviour of a heterogeneous compacted soil: experimental observations and modelling
A. Gens, B. Valleján, M. Sánchez, C. Imbert, M.V. Villar and M. Van Geet

Modelling the response of Lechage earth and rockfill dam
E.E. Alonso, S. Olivella, A. Soriano, N.M. Pinyol and F. Esteban

Physical modelling of wetting-induced collapse in embankment base
L. Thorel, V. Ferber, B. Caicedo and I.M. Khokhar

Selected questions and answers