Climate Adaptation Control Technologies for Urban Spaces (CACTUS)

气候变化正在并将继续导致更强烈的降水事件和更大幅度的冷暖温度，导致严重的洪水，极端干旱，冻结和融化。这将影响城市地质基础设施的许多部分，如浅基础、挡土结构、地下设施、道路底基和铁路结构。在干旱年份，由于粘土的收缩/膨胀运动造成的损失在英国造成了超过16亿英镑的经济损失。拟议研究的新奇在于开发“气候适应复合屏障系统”（包括蓄水层和毛细屏障），能够限制不断变化的环境对地质基础设施的影响，从而提高其工程可持续性和复原力。施加在我们基础设施上的环境循环作用受土壤-植物-大气相互作用的控制，这是一个由大气驱动的耦合热-水-力学问题，并受土壤类型，应力历史，应力水平，矿物学，土壤-水化学和植被的影响。理解这一复杂问题需要系统的研究和连贯的方法。该提案描述了系统的实验和数值模拟研究，以了解复合屏障系统在受到极端天气事件和长期气候变化影响时的反应，并开发适当的可持续适应技术，以减轻对城市地理基础设施的潜在影响。

Climate change is causing, and will continue to cause, more intense precipitation events and greater amplitude of warm and cold temperatures leading to severe flooding, extreme drying, freezing and thawing. This will affect many parts of the urban geo-infrastructure such as shallow foundations, retaining structures, buried utilities, road subbase and railway formations. The costs of damage due to shrink/swell movements on clay soils have resulted in economic losses of over £1.6 billion in the UK during drought years. The novelty of the proposed research is the development of "climate adaptation composite barrier systems" (comprising water holding layers and a capillary barrier) capable of limiting the impact of a changing environment on the geo-infrastructure and hence increasing their engineering sustainability and resilience. Environmental cyclic actions imposed on our infrastructure are governed by soil-plant-atmosphere interaction, which is a coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical problem driven by the atmosphere and influenced by soil type, stress history, stress level, mineralogy, soil-water chemistry and vegetation. Understanding this complex problem requires systematic research and a coherent approach. This proposal describes systematic experimental and numerical modelling studies to understand the response of composite barrier systems, when subjected to extreme weather events and long-term climate changes, and to develop appropriate sustainable adaptation technologies to mitigate potential impacts on urban geo-infrastructure.