Predicting the saturated hydraulic conductivity of particulate assemblies based on active fraction of fines and particle-size disparity parameters

ABSTRACT

The hydraulic conductivity parameter of soil deposits represents an important indicator in the different soil mechanics studies (stability analysis, settlement, drainage, seepage) and it is commonly related to several influential physical factors as fines fraction, gradation, particle shape and size, porosity etc. In this context, this paper intends to predict the hydraulic conductivity based on the intergrain contact state in terms of active fraction of fines (b) and particle-size disparity (x) of particulate assemblies. To achieve this goal, a series of constant head permeability tests were carried out on reconstituted Hostun sand-silt mixture samples in the range of 0–40% fines content at three different initial relative densities (D_r = 20%, 54% and 90%) to measure the saturated hydraulic conductivity. The obtained results indicate that the normalised fines content (f_c/f_cthre), the disparity of size ratio and the active fraction of fines (b) could be considered as reliable parameters in the prediction of the sand-silt binary assemblies saturated hydraulic conductivity response (R² ≥ 0.94). Moreover, it is found that the saturated hydraulic conductivity decreases with the increase of the equivalent void ratio proposed by (e*_{Rahman et al.2008}) and Nguyen (e*_{Nguyen et al.2017}) of the studied materials.

KEYWORDS:

• Saturated hydraulic conductivity
• particulate assemblies
• active fraction of fines
• normalised fines content
• disparity of size ratio

Acknowledgements

This research work was carried out in the Laboratory of Soil Mechanics, Foundation Engineering & Environmental Geotechnics in the context of mutual scientific cooperation between (Laboratory of Material Sciences & Environment) Hassiba Benbouali University of Chlef (Algeria) and Ruhr-Universitat of Bochum (Germany). The authors are grateful for the financial support received from the Directorate General for Scientific Research and Technological Development, Algeria.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Data Availability Statement

No data, models, or code were generated or used during the study.