Abstract
Mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP) is a simple and fast way to obtain the pore distribution of soil and can be used to estimate the soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC). In previous studies, soil was assumed to be a perfect wettability material, and the contact angle (CA) of the soil-water interface was taken as zero in the SWCC prediction method. However, the CA has proved to be much greater than zero even for hydrophilic soils according to some soil wettability experiments, and it has a significant effect on predicting the SWCC. In this research, a method for predicting the SWCC by MIP, which takes the CA as a fitting coefficient, is proposed. The pore size distribution curves are measured by MIP, and the SWCCs of two loess soils are measured by pressure plate and filter paper tests. When the CA is taken as 70° and 50° for the wetting and drying process, respectively, the SWCCs predicted by the pore size distribution curves agree well with the measured SWCCs. The predicted suction range of the proposed method is 0–105 kPa. The consistency of the results suggests that utilizing the MIP test to predict the SWCC with a proper CA is effective for loess.
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Abbreviations
- CA:
-
Contact angle
- CRM:
-
Capillary rising method
- FPT:
-
Filter paper test
- MIP:
-
Mercury intrusion porosimetry
- PPT:
-
Pressure plate test
- PSD:
-
Pore size distribution
- SDM:
-
Sessile drop method
- SWCC:
-
Soil-water characteristic curve
- WPM:
-
Wilhelmy plate method
- d :
-
Pore diameter
- m h :
-
Slope of the w2 — t curves of n-hexane
- m w :
-
Slope of the w2 — t curves of water
- n :
-
Porosity of the sample
- P m :
-
Intruding pressure of MIP
- T m :
-
Surface tension of the mercury phase
- T w :
-
Surface tension of the water phase
- V a :
-
Real air volume
- V a,m :
-
Air volume measured with MIP
- V m :
-
Mercury volume
- V max :
-
Nondetected pore volume (pores that are too large
- V max :
-
to measure with MIP)
- V min :
-
Nonintruded pore volume (pores are too small for mercury to intrude with MIP)
- V s :
-
Soil solid volume
- V t :
-
Real total soil volume
- V t,m :
-
Total soil volume measured by MIP
- V w :
-
Intruded water volume
- w :
-
Increased mass at CRM test
- α m :
-
Contact angle at the air-mercury-soil interface
- α w :
-
Contact angle at the air-water-soil interface
- α wd :
-
Drying contact angle at the air-water-soil interface
- α ww :
-
Wetting contact angle at the air-water-soil interface
- η h :
-
Dynamic viscosity of n-hexane
- α w :
-
Dynamic viscosity of water
- θ w :
-
Volumetric water content
- ρ d :
-
Real soil density
- ρ d,m :
-
Soil density measured by MIP
- ρ h :
-
Density of n-hexane
- ρ w :
-
Density of water
- σ lv,h :
-
Surface energy of n-hexane
- σ lv,w :
-
Surface energy of water
- ψ :
-
Matric suction
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Acknowledgements
The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Program No. 41790442 and No. 41772278).
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Li, H., Li, Tl., Li, P. et al. Prediction of loess soil-water characteristic curve by mercury intrusion porosimetry. J. Mt. Sci. 17, 2203–2213 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-019-5929-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11629-019-5929-2