Development of Micromechanically-Based Models for Unsaturated Geomaterials

点击翻译按钮获取中文摘要

Emerging geomechanics problems associated with infrastructure, energy and the environment present challenges to basic tenets of geotechnical engineering. For instance, unsaturated, thermal and coupled conditions demand analyses that go beyond traditional theories which are mostly phenomenological in nature. Unsaturation in the simplest case refers to the presence of more than one fluid, e.g. liquid and gas separated by interfaces within the pore space. This results in the behaviour of an unsaturated medium being vastly different from the dry or fully saturated case. In fact, unsaturation confers the medium with an apparent cohesion, a higher strength and stiffness that are a function of moisture and temperature. This gain in strength is evanescent under varying hydraulic and thermal loads such as climatic fluctuations or gassy conditions. As such, strength could be rapidly lost causing spontaneous collapse failures in geostructures.