Assessment of the internal stability of granular soils against suffusion

Abstract

The internal stability against suffusion of granular soils and filter which have a primary coarser skeleton and loose finer particles (i.e. bimodal structure) were studied using a semi-empirical method to divide the grain size distribution curve to two components, a primary skeleton and loose particles; the primary skeleton acts as a filter for the loose particles and this filter is active, and hence the whole soil is internally stable, if the d₈₅ of loose particles is greater than the controlling constriction size (D_c35 ) of the primary skeleton. Also, a statistical analysis was carried out to determine the controlling constriction size (D_c35 ) as function of the some soil grain sizes.

Keywords:

• internal stability
• soil erosion
• suffusion
• cohesionless soils
• filters