An Effective Stress Equation for Unsaturated Granular Media in Pendular Regime
Date
2014-04-28
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Abstract
The mechanical behaviour of a wet granular material is investigated through a micromechanical analysis of force transport between interacting particles with a given packing and distribution of capillary liquid bridges. A single effective stress tensor, characterizing the tensorial contribution of the matric suction and encapsulating evolving liquid bridges, packing, interfaces, and water saturation, is derived micromechanically.
The physical significance of the effective stress parameter (χ) as originally introduced in Bishop’s equation is examined and it turns out that Bishop’s equation is incomplete. More interestingly, an additional parameter that accounts for surface tension forces arising from the so-called contractile skin emerges in the newly proposed effective stress equation. Therefore, a so-called capillary stress is introduced which is shown to have two contributions: one emanating from suction between particles due to air-water pressure difference, and the second arising from surface tension forces along the contours between particles and water menisci.
It turns out that the capillary stress is anisotropic in nature as dictated by the spatial distribution of water menisci, particle packing and degree of saturation, and thus engenders a meniscus based shear strength that increases with the anisotropy of the particle packing and the degree of saturation. The newly proposed effective stress equation is analyzed with respect to packing, liquid bridge distribution and strength issues. Finally, discrete element modelling is used to verify the micromechanical aspects of the proposed effective stress equation.
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Engineering--Civil, Engineering--Mechanical, Geotechnology
Citation
Khosravani, S. (2014). An Effective Stress Equation for Unsaturated Granular Media in Pendular Regime (Master's thesis, University of Calgary, Calgary, Canada). Retrieved from https://prism.ucalgary.ca. doi:10.11575/PRISM/24849