Abstract
Developing a sound theoretical description for the evolution of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of compacted bentonite during re-saturation has remained a challenge because of the complex microstructure effects influenced by physico-chemical phenomena. This paper proposes a new relationship for the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of compacted bentonite based on Kozeny-Carman relationship. A new relationship is also proposed for the relative permeability of compacted bentonite that incorporates the effects of microstructure swelling. The application of the new relationship for the case of compacted GMZ bentonite provides well correlated results with the experimental data reported in the literature.
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Acknowledgements
Financial support through the University of Manchester’s President Doctoral Scholarship Award for Tian Chen (1st author) is gratefully acknowledged.
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Chen, T., Sedighi, M., Jivkov, A., Seetharam, S.C. (2019). Unsaturated Hydraulic Conductivity of Compacted Bentonite: Revisit of Microstructure Effects. In: Zhan, L., Chen, Y., Bouazza, A. (eds) Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics Volume 2. ICEG 2018. Environmental Science and Engineering(). Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2224-2_67
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-13-2224-2_67
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