Abstract
The evaluation of soil-water characteristic curve is one of the most important procedures in the matter of understanding the soil behaviour during wetting and drying processes. Even though it might be carried out by established methods, this practice is considered a time-consuming technique, and because of this it is still under-used in comparison with its potential applications. In this way, this paper aims to analyse the correlation of soil suction and soil resistivity to produce a time-reduced soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC), based on resistivity measured values. To perform this research, it was used a set of soil samples collected from Nova Friburgo, Rio de Janeiro – Brazil. The material was geotechnically characterized by standard methods. To determine the (SWCC), it was used the filter paper method and the volumetric water content/suctions were obtained by wetting and drying stages for two paths that emerged from the field moisture content. The results revealed a remarkable relationship between suction and the resistivity measured data, emphasizing the feasibility of determining the Soil-Water Characteristic Curve by resistivity measurements, here named Soil-Water Resistivity Curve (SWResC).
Highlights
The unsaturated properties of the soils are increasingly being demanded by researchers
Since the saturated analysis are not able to depict the entire relationship between the positive and negative pore water pressure of the soils in its natural conditions, the ability to retain water at different moisture levels, described by the soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC), is pointed out as a relevant subject recognized by a standard method, and referred by several papers [1,2,3,4]
The results emphasized the agreement for volumetric water content vs. suction (Figure 3), and the volumetric water content vs. resistivity (Figure 4)
Summary
The unsaturated properties of the soils are increasingly being demanded by researchers. Even being considered as the simplest method to determine the relation between moisture and suction of the soil, the equilibrium of suction is the major factor responsible by operational limitations regarding its time-consuming characteristic It happens because the stabilization time varies according to the level of suction measured and may vary from 7 to 30 days [6,7]. Regarding this delay in obtaining the results, this technique is still under-used and complementary procedures are currently emerging from theoretical and experimental research [8,9,10] to obtain the SWCC in a reduced time
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