Scaling Laws for Centrifuge Modeling of Capillary Rise in Sandy Soils
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 130, Issue 6
Abstract
The application of geotechnical centrifuge modeling to environmental problems seems promising. In this paper, one aspect of similitude laws concerning the flow of water through soils is investigated. Within the Network of European Centrifuges for Environmental Geotechnic Research, several tests have been carried out to study similitude laws describing the capillary ascension in porous media at different levels of acceleration. The aim of this paper is to present the results obtained at Ruhr-Universität Bochum. A fine sand is used in the experiment. For the visualization of capillary height in the soil sample, image processing is used. Different boundary conditions (constant or variable water level) have been investigated and discussed. All these experiments confirm that capillary rise appears scaled by the factor N and time seems to be scaled with Thus, these results support the possibility of extending the use of accelerated small-scale models to the capillary phenomenon in centrifuge and open the way to more complex investigations of flow and pollutant transport in unsaturated soils.
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References
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 130 • Issue 6 • June 2004
Pages: 615 - 620
Copyright
Copyright © 2004 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Dec 7, 1999
Accepted: Sep 9, 2003
Published online: May 14, 2004
Published in print: Jun 2004
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