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Original Articles

Some investigations to quantify hysteresis associated with water retention behaviour of fine-grained soils

ORCID Icon, , & ORCID Icon
Pages 264-275 | Received 24 Jan 2016, Accepted 23 Feb 2018, Published online: 08 Mar 2018
 

ABSTRACT

The soil water retention characteristics curve (SWRC) has been reported to be quite useful for estimation of unsaturated soil properties. However, the uniqueness of SWRC is questionable due to hysteresis associated with the drying- and wetting-path SWRCs and this poses great challenge in utilising the SWRC for reliable estimation of unsaturated soil properties. Although hysteresis associated with SWRCs has been extensively studied for coarse-grained soils, due to limited studies on wetting-path SWRC for fine-grained soils, the hysteresis for fine-grained soils is not well understood. The present work attempts to address this gap, by studying the drying- and wetting-path SWRCs for eight different fine-grained soils by employing Dew point Potentiameter (WP4C®), Environmental Chamber and Controlled Water Sprinkling method. The study employs the concept of ‘Suction Hysteresis’, ψh, for quantification of hysteresis. Further, the influence of various soil-specific properties on the variation of ψh-water content relationship (viz., slope of variation of suction hysteresis, Sψh) has also been studied and demonstrated. The findings of the study are quite encouraging and it has been realised that extensive studies on soils of different characteristics would be quite useful in quantifying the variation of SWRC during drying and wetting cycles.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

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