Assessing Persistence of Entrapped Gas for Induced Partial Saturation
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 3
Abstract
Induced partial saturation (IPS) is a novel method to suppress the generation of excess pore-water pressure and increase the liquefaction resistance of loose granular soils. Mechanical benefits associated with IPS are linked to the persistence of entrapped bubbles. Civil infrastructure operates for decades, often longer than a century, and thus the longevity of gas is a salient consideration for adoption of IPS in practice. Modeling the physical and chemical mechanisms that influence the persistence of entrapped bubbles is a practical avenue to address gas durability on these time scales, a limitation of physical experiments. The governing aqueous-phase advection-diffusion processes and interphase gas kinetics associated with bubble dissolution are simulated in a finite-difference numerical framework, validated with elemental and bench-scale experiments, and then extended to address soil resaturation rates under different subsurface conditions. The study demonstrates that emplaced gas is durable to the extent where diffusion-induced and groundwater seepage-induced dissolution should not discourage advancement of IPS, but will not remain indefinitely. Potential solutions to mitigate the decay of a gassy soil layer are discussed.
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Data Availability Statement
Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.
Acknowledgments
The authors would like to thank the University of Maine for their financial support of the junior author. Additionally, they would like to acknowledge the useful comments and suggestions provided by Shaleen Jain and Bill Davids from the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at University of Maine, as well as the useful comments and suggestions provided by the anonymous reviewers.
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 3 • March 2021
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© 2020 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 6, 2020
Accepted: Oct 27, 2020
Published online: Dec 31, 2020
Published in print: Mar 1, 2021
Discussion open until: May 31, 2021
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