Experimental Investigation of the Hydraulic Erosion of Noncohesive Compacted Soils
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136, Issue 11
Abstract
This paper presents the results of a laboratory investigation whose purpose was to evaluate the effects of compaction on the erodibility of cohesionless soils. By means of a recently developed flume experiment, sediment erosion rates and incipient motion, as a function of shear stress, average velocity, and dry density, have been determined for three compacted sand and gravel mixtures. A preliminary comparison of the incipient motion values shows that granular soils compacted at the Proctor optimum have a higher resistance to free surface flow erosion than those compacted at lower and higher densities. This leads one to infer that the Proctor optimum, generally used as a standard for construction, might also be an optimum for hydraulic resistance and stability. Additional comparison of the experimental data with two commonly used incipient motion criteria also suggests that Yang’s criterion is a better predictor of soil detachment than the Shields-Yalin criterion.
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Acknowledgments
Financial support for this work was provided by a research grant from the National Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC) and by a scholarship from École Polytechnique de Montréal.
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Published In
Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 136 • Issue 11 • November 2010
Pages: 901 - 913
Copyright
© 2010 ASCE.
History
Received: May 1, 2009
Accepted: May 3, 2010
Published online: Oct 15, 2010
Published in print: Nov 2010
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