Use of In Situ Air Flow Measurements to Study Permeability in Cracked Clay Soils
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 133, Issue 12
Abstract
The work describes in situ measurements of crack induced permeability as a function of depth, (down to ), in clay soils at two field sites, using the gas flow technique described in an earlier study. The gas flow response to applied pressure was found to exhibit a significant nonlinearity at all depths indicating non-Darcian flow despite the fact that the flow was likely to be well within the laminar flow regime. Application of three-dimensional finite-element models to describe the gas flow revealed that the nonlinearity is likely to be an intrinsic behavior related to the soil-gas flow interaction. The Forchheimer compressible flow equation successfully simulated the behavior at all depths. The viscous and inertial permeability parameters obtained from this analysis showed a wide range of values which were closely correlated to the pore-water content of the soil medium, clearly showing the influence of ped swelling on the contraction of macrovoid channels in the structured clay soil.
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Acknowledgments
The writers wish to acknowledge the contribution of Mr. Hlwan Moe in the development of the basic air-flow technique and for his assistance in carrying out the fieldwork. This research has been carried out with the financial support from the Australian Research Council (ARC). The numerical modeling was undertaken using FEMLAB version 2.1 (Comsol Inc., United States).
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 133 • Issue 12 • December 2007
Pages: 1577 - 1586
Copyright
© 2007 ASCE.
History
Received: May 11, 2006
Accepted: Mar 25, 2007
Published online: Dec 1, 2007
Published in print: Dec 2007
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