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Analysis of macroscopic desiccation shrinkage experiments indicates that most, but not all of the shrinkage during drying occurs while soil is still saturated. Shrinkage practically ceases and air starts to penetrate the soil, when the water content is sti ...
There is currently a lack of established calculation method for the geotechnical design of heat exchanger piles. Thermo-mechanical effects are ignored and large overall security factors are therefore applied. This paper presents a new geotechnical numerica ...
There is currently a lack of established calculation method for the geotechnical design of heat exchanger piles, although the technology is experiencing a fast expansion. Instead of quantifying the effects of temperature changes on the static behavior of h ...
Drying shrinkage is modeled at a microscale as a two-stage process of deformation and evacuation of a two-tube vessel system, based on porosimetry evolution. In the first stage water flow is driven by an external evaporation flux. Flow is associated with a ...
Soils, as well as most of deformable multiphase porous materials, are likely to suffer from desiccation cracking, leading to the formation of regular crack patterns affecting their permeability. The ensuing cracks spacing has often been related to a concep ...
The paper presents a benchmarking study carried out within the ‘Mechanics of Unsaturated Soils for Engineering’ (MUSE) network aimed at comparing different techniques for measurement and control of suction. Techniques tested by the eight ‘Mechanics of Unsa ...
A meso-scale model based on the evolution of the pore system and idealized as bimodal is numerically examined. A simplified evolution of the model reveals a series of characteristics that qualitatively agree with the observed macroscopic experimental findi ...
Damage induced by desiccation (i.e. drying shrinkage and cracking) is an issue to be investigated in deep geological nuclear waste storage engineering. A dried and cracked zone can form in the underground gallery host shale due to ventilation effects. Incr ...
Damage induced by desiccation in clays (i.e. drying shrinkage and cracking) is an issue to be investigated in geo-environmental engineering, especially when the clay is used as a confining barrier for industrial and nuclear waste storage. Dramatic increase ...
Mechanisms of free-shrinkage strains of desiccating deformable initially saturated soils are studied. The role of the surface evaporation rate, surface tension and viscosity of pore fluid, and soil compressibility and permeability is investigated in experi ...