Addressing Challenging Problems in Unsaturated Soil Mechanics

许多工程项目的运行都受到地表水平衡的影响。水平衡受到气候条件的强烈影响（例如，降水量、温度等），以及地表附近的土壤条件。水通过蒸散作用从地表向上运动，或者通过渗透作用进入地表。计算地表的“实际蒸发量”AE已被证明是最具挑战性的部分。实际蒸发率已被证明受到许多因素的影响（例如，地表颜色、孔隙水中的盐分、地表盐分浓度和非饱和土壤性质）。该建议旨在改进用于计算实际蒸发通量的现有模型。目前正在解决的问题与油砂尾矿的干燥有关;然而，所提出的分析进展适用于干旱地区的各种土壤。该提案研究的另一个方面将为随着土壤吸力的增加而发生大体积变化的土壤的非饱和土壤性质函数开发估计程序。拟议的研究计划是针对解决岩土工程问题，已成为显而易见的工程师试图利用现有的蒸发模型。来自气象站的气候数据被用作用于水平衡模拟的土壤-大气模式的输入。

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.