Unsaturated Soil Mechanics for Geotechnical Engineering Practices
The understanding of unsaturated soil mechanics principles is of interest to a wide spectrum of geotechnical problems associated with soils above water table and compacted soils. Unsaturated soil between ground surface and water table is the interface zone between soil and environment. The unsaturated zone plays an important role in determining the impact of climate change such as increasingly frequent rainfall of high intensity or prolonged drought on geotechnical structures. In addition, most geotechnical structures are made from compacted soils that are unsaturated. Therefore, understanding of unsaturated soil behavior is paramount in geotechnical engineering, particularly in mitigating the impact of climate change.
In general, soil should be considered unsaturated with special cases of saturated soil below water table and dry soil. Two independent stress state variables that control volume change and shear strength of unsaturated soil can be simplified to a single effective stress for the special case of saturated soil. Similarly, constitutive equations for unsaturated soil can be simplified to those equations commonly used for saturated soil with a smooth transition. The role of unsaturated soil mechanics in understanding the behavior of soils in Indonesia and in developing innovative solutions for solving practical problems such as stability of slopes nearby infrastructure and urban areas as well as mining slopes, landfill cover, retaining wall and mitigation of the impact of climate change will be discussed in the Webinar.
Few learning points:
- Stress state variables and constitutive equations based on the unsaturated soil mechanics principles.
- Laboratory testing for characterization of unsaturated soils
- Measurements of matric suction (or negative pore-water pressures)
- Application of unsaturated soil mechanics in solving geotechnical engineering problems with commercial geotechnical software.
Presenter:
Dr. Alfrendo Satyanaga - Assistant Professor at Nazarbayev University
LinkedIn Profile (https://www.linkedin.com/in/alfrendo-satyanaga-2a70b525/)