Addressing Challenging Problems in Unsaturated Soil Mechanics

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The performance of many engineering projects is influenced by the water balance at ground surface. Water balance is strongly influced by climatic conditions (e.g., precipitation, temperature, etc.), as well as the soil conditions near to ground surface. Water is either moving upward from the ground surface by evapo-transpiration or moving into the ground surface through infiltration. It is the calculation of "actual evaporation", AE, from the ground surface that has proven to be the most challenging component to calculate. Actual evaporation rates have been shown to be affected by a number of factors (e.g., ground surface color, salts in the pore-water, salt accummulation at surface and the unsaturated soil properties). This proposal is directed at improving existing models that are used for the calculation of actual evaporation fluxes. The immediate problems being addressed are related to the drying of Oil Sands tailings; however, the proposed analytical advances are applicable to a wide range of soils in dry regions. Another aspect of the proposal research will develop estimation procedures for unsaturated soil property functions for soils that undergo large volume changes as soil suction is increased. The proposed research program is directed towards solving geotechnical engineering problems that have become apparent to engineers attempting to make use of existing evaporation models. Climate data from weather stations is used as input to the prposed soil-atmoshperic model used for water balance simulations.