Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity Estimation—A Case Study Modelling the Soil-Atmospheric Boundary Interaction

Abstract

Pore water pressure changes due to soil-atmospheric boundary interaction can significantly influence soil behaviour and can negatively affect the safety and stability of geotechnical structures. For example, prolonged rainfall events can lead to increased pore water pressure and lower strength; repeated cycles of pore water pressure changes can lead to degradation of strength. These effects are likely to become more severe in the future due to climate change in many parts of the world. To analyse the behaviour of soil subjected to atmospheric boundary interactions, several parameters are needed, and hydraulic conductivity is one of the more important and is difficult to determine. Hydraulic conductivity deduced from laboratory tests are often different from those from the field tests, sometimes by orders of magnitude. The problem becomes even more complicated when the soil state is unsaturated, where the hydraulic conductivity varies with the soil’s state of saturation. In this paper, a relatively simple alternative approach is presented for the estimation of the hydraulic conductivity of unsaturated soils. The method involved a systematic re-analysis of observed pore water pressure response in the field. Using a finite element software, the soil-atmospheric boundary interaction and related saturated/unsaturated seepage of an instrumented slope have been analysed, and results are compared with field measurements. The numerical model could capture the development of suction, positive pore water pressure and changes in water content with reasonable accuracy and demonstrated the usefulness of the hydraulic conductivity estimation method discussed in this paper.