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An Extension to Barcelona Basic Model Predicting the Behavior of Unsaturated Soils

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Abstract

Slope failures along highways can highly affect the stability of road structure. In this respect, the analysis of the wetting process in unsaturated media is of great importance to slopes and pavements. In this study, the Barcelona basic model (BBM) was implemented in finite difference-based program to investigate the geomechanical behavior of fine-grained unsaturated soils subjected to wetting. This numerical modeling has been verified against some data in the literature. The application of the model was investigated for the response of a compacted fill slope involving suction-induced problems. The study also considered the effect of the over-consolidation ratio (OCR) in unsaturated soils, especially stress paths, as a modification to BBM. The simulations also include using BBM and modified BBM in FLAC to evaluate the response of deep soil mixing (DSM) improvement method in subsurface areas of the pavements in unsaturated media. Finally, modified BBM codes in the finite-difference program were presented for dealing with problems associated with soil slope and the DSM method to improve the foundation of pavements. Also, over-consolidation ratio has been added to BBM to optimize its application in suction various processes. Overall, it has been found that the modified BBM leads to more occurred results.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Civil Engineering, Central Tehran Branch, Islamic Azad University, Tehran, Iran

    Alireza Sadeghabadi & Amirali Zad

  2. Faculty of Civil, Water & Environmental Engineering, Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran

    Ali Noorzad

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  1. Alireza Sadeghabadi
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  2. Ali Noorzad
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  3. Amirali Zad
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Correspondence to Ali Noorzad.

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Sadeghabadi, A., Noorzad, A. & Zad, A. An Extension to Barcelona Basic Model Predicting the Behavior of Unsaturated Soils. Transp. Infrastruct. Geotech. 9, 133–154 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40515-021-00159-6

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