Design and Development of an Apparatus for Internal Erosion and Suffusion Testing in Soils

Document Type : پژوهشی

Authors

• piltan Tabatabaie Shourijeh
• abas soroush

10.22067/civil.v26i1.44040

Abstract

Internal erosion is a major cause of failure and damage in embankment dams. A complicated and detrimental mechanism of internal erosion is the suffusion process. This paper presents a recently developed automated large scale permeameter for internal erosion and suffusion testing. The new apparatus is capable of applying surcharge loads to the specimen while maintaining a unidirectional gradient controlled seepage flow via a computer closed-loop system. The instrumentation and transducers available continuously measure deformation, pore pressure variation and stress levels throughout the specimen. Multistage commissioning tests on four soils samples are reported that illustrate the novel features of the permeameter and instrumentation. The preliminary results highlight the suffusion process while revealing that the amount of erosion is proportional to the stability index, and soils experiencing suffusion undergo volume reduction conjoined with increasing void ratio.

Keywords

• Internal Erosion
• Suffusion
• Internally Unstable Soils
• Seepage

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