Abstract
Expansive clay is of multi-fissures and deterioration with the changing moisture. To ensure the safety of earth constructions founded on expansive clay in the semiarid area, the effects of intensive water migration have received much more attention, together with global warming and climate change. Herein, water migration was analyzed from the perspective of the anomalous diffusion equation, and the time-fractional vapor–liquid migration equation in one-dimensional unsaturated clay was discussed based on Caputo and conformable fractional derivatives. The model’s validity was also verified by the measured data obtained from the migration experiments under various temperatures and water gradients in a closed system. The sensitivity of the fractional order was further analyzed. Results show that the fractional-order water migration model can describe the migration process of water in unsaturated clay well. Its error was about 30% of the integer-order model. The presented model may help study the law of water migration in unsaturated expansive clay.
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This work was supported by the National Natural Sciences Foundation of China (No 41172274), and the key scientific research project of Anhui University of Finance and Economics (ACKYB22020).
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Qiuyan Liu: data curation, methodology, writing—original draft, validation. Mingwu Wang: supervision, methodology, writing—original draft, funding acquisition, writing—review and editing.
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Liu, Q., Wang, M. Numerical investigation of water migration in a closed unsaturated expansive clay system. Bull Eng Geol Environ 82, 202 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-023-03232-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-023-03232-1