Modelling of the water retention characteristic of deformable soils

Abstract

A recently proposed water retention model has been further developed for the application on unsaturated deformable soils. The physical mechanisms underpinning the water retention characteristic of soils was at first described in terms of traditional theories of capillarity and interfacial physical chemistry at pore level. Then upscaling to macroscopic level of material scale in terms of average volume theorem produces an analytical formula for the water retention characteristic. The methodology produces an explicit form of the water retention curve as a function of three state parameters: the suction, the degree-of-water-saturation and the void-ratio. At last, the model has been tested using experimental measurements.