TY - JOUR
T1 - A New Technique for Deep in situ Measurements of the Soil Water Retention Behaviour
AU - Rocchi, Irene
AU - Gragnano, Carmine Gerardo
AU - Govoni, Laura
AU - Mentani, Alessio
AU - Bittelli, Marco
AU - Castiglione, Paolo
AU - Buzzi, Olivier
AU - Gottardi, Guido
N1 - This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
PY - 2018
Y1 - 2018
N2 - In situ measurements of soil suction and water content in deep soil layers still represent an experimental challenge. Mostly developed within agriculture related disciplines, field techniques for the identification of soil retention behaviour have been so far employed in the geotechnical context to monitor shallow landslides and seasonal volume changes beneath shallow foundations, within the most superficial ground strata. In this paper, a novel installation technique is presented, discussed and assessed, which allows to extend the use of commercially available low cost and low maintenance instruments to characterise deep soil layers. Multi-depth installations have been successfully carried out using two different sensors to measure the soil suction and water content up to 7m from the soil surface. Preliminary laboratory investigations were also shown to provide a reasonable benchmark to the field data. The results of this studyoffer a convenient starting point to accommodate important geotechnical works such as river and road embankments in the traditional monitoring of unsaturated soil variables.
AB - In situ measurements of soil suction and water content in deep soil layers still represent an experimental challenge. Mostly developed within agriculture related disciplines, field techniques for the identification of soil retention behaviour have been so far employed in the geotechnical context to monitor shallow landslides and seasonal volume changes beneath shallow foundations, within the most superficial ground strata. In this paper, a novel installation technique is presented, discussed and assessed, which allows to extend the use of commercially available low cost and low maintenance instruments to characterise deep soil layers. Multi-depth installations have been successfully carried out using two different sensors to measure the soil suction and water content up to 7m from the soil surface. Preliminary laboratory investigations were also shown to provide a reasonable benchmark to the field data. The results of this studyoffer a convenient starting point to accommodate important geotechnical works such as river and road embankments in the traditional monitoring of unsaturated soil variables.
U2 - 10.1680/jgere.17.00012
DO - 10.1680/jgere.17.00012
M3 - Journal article
SN - 2052-6156
VL - 5
SP - 3
EP - 12
JO - Geotechnical Research
JF - Geotechnical Research
IS - 1
ER -