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Experimental investigation on seepage erosion of the soil–rock interface

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Abstract

Internal erosion under seepage flow affects the hydraulic and mechanical behavior of the soil, which is one of the most important factors of geological disasters. Due to that the soil–rock interface can be the potential preferential seepage channels commonly, the characteristics of erosion are more significant and hazardous at the soil–rock interface. In this study, a series of laboratory experiments are performed to investigate the failure mechanism and evolution of interfacial seepage erosion. The influences of two essential influence factors (i.e., the confining pressure and the roughness of the interface) are investigated by comparing the seepage velocity, hydraulic conductivity, failure hydraulic gradient, and failure hydraulic shear stress in experiments. Furthermore, the failure pattern of interfacial seepage erosion is particular investigated by the CT scanning. The interfacial seepage erosion tests indicate that the interfacial seepage erosion shows a three-phase progressive failure as the hydraulic gradient increases and the hydraulic conductivity decrease with the progress of suffusion in the initiation phase. The increase of confining pressure leads to the increase of failure hydraulic gradient. The results of CT scanning show that the roughness of the soil–rock interface significantly affects the size and shape of resulting zone of erosion.

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Data availability

Some or all data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

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Notation

The following symbols are used in this paper:

CTnumber CT number of scanning material (Hu)

i              hydraulic gradient

K            intrinsic permeability

k             hydraulic conductivity (m/s)

n             soil porosity

v             Darcy velocity (m/s)

μ             absorption coefficient of scanning material

η             dynamic viscosity (kg/m ∙ s)

τ              hydraulic shear stress (Pa)

Funding

The research was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos. 41972297 and 41902290) and by supporting program of hundred promising innovative talents in Hebei Provincial Education Office (No. SLRC2019027) and by Natural Science Foundation of Hebei Province (No. D2020202002).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Civil and Transportation Engineering, Hebei University of Technology, Tianjin, 300401, China

    Da Huang, Wen-Bo Huang, Chen-Yang Ke & Yi-Xiang Song

  2. School of Geological Engineering and Geomatics, Chang’an University, Xi’an, 710064, China

    Da Huang

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  1. Da Huang
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Correspondence to Yi-Xiang Song.

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Huang, D., Huang, WB., Ke, CY. et al. Experimental investigation on seepage erosion of the soil–rock interface. Bull Eng Geol Environ 80, 3115–3137 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-021-02104-w

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