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Division S-1—Soil Physics

An Approach for Estimating the Shrinkage Geometry Factor at a Moisture Content

Agricultural Engineering Division, Faculty of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Technion, Haifa 32000, Israel

^* Corresponding author (agvictor{at}tx.technion.ac.il).

Soil shrinkage is characterized, along with the shrinkage curve, by a partition of the volume change of the soil matrix between contributions of cracks and soil subsidence. This partition is determined by the shrinkage geometry factor (r_s). Knowledge of the value of r_s is important for the consideration of water and solute transport in swelling and cracking soils. The r_s concept was recently used for the generalization of flow equations in the case of the axially symmetric two-dimensional deformation of shrink-swell soils. Sufficient accuracy of the r_s value is very essential for all these applications. However, the theoretical definition and available measurement method of the r_s factor include some implicit assumptions that are disturbed in real conditions. These disturbances, which are not accounted for in r_s measurements, can lead to distortion of the r_s value. The objectives of the work are: to explicitly formulate the assumptions; to introduce a new presentation of the r_s concept based on a comparison between different shrinkage curves of a soil; to suggest an approach for estimating the r_s values corrected by taking into account the disturbance of one of the assumptions; and to experimentally illustrate the approach using the simplest case of pure-clay paste samples when they dry, shrink, and crack. The results show the necessity and practical possibility of considering the r_s factor as a function of soil moisture and introducing to the factor the multiplicative correction that is connected with accounting for possible macrocracks in soil samples to be used for experimental estimation of the r_s factor.

Abbreviations: CEC, cation exchange capacity

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