Abstract
Internal instability of a soil is closely related to its particle size distribution (PSD) that occurs when its coarser particles cannot protect the finer particles from erosion, thereby inducing permanent changes in its original PSD. This study proposes a new criterion based on grading entropy theory for prompt assessment of internal stability. PSD is discretized into several fractions to extract particle grading information through statistical analysis. Two normalized variables: base entropy (\(h_{0}\)) and entropy increment (\(\Delta h\)) are determined directly from the PSD curve, and the principle of maximum entropy is used to obtain a semi-ellipse within plane formed by \(h_{0}\) and \(\Delta h\), wherein a PSD can be simply expressed as a point. A clear boundary between stable and unstable soils is visualized at maximum \(\Delta h\) line, which is used to correctly evaluate a large published experimental dataset and its performance is compared with the existing criteria.
Abbreviations
- \(p_{i}\) :
-
Frequency of ith fraction
- \(\mu_{ij}\) :
-
The relative frequency of jth imaginary cell within the ith fraction
- N :
-
The number of fractions of a PSD curve discretized in abstract fraction system (AFS)
- \(M_{i}\) :
-
The weight corresponding to the ith fraction (kg)
- \(M\) :
-
The total weight of the soil sample (kg)
- \(C_{i}\) :
-
The number of the imaginary elementary cells divided by dmin within ith fraction
- \(d_{\min }\) :
-
The minimum grain diameter of the elementary cell, dmin = 2–17 mm
- \(H\) :
-
The grading entropy of soil sample
- \(H_{0} = \mathop \sum \limits_{i = 1}^{N} p_{i} \log_{2} C_{i}\) :
-
Represents base entropy
- \(\Delta H = - \mathop \sum \limits_{i = 1}^{N} p_{i} \log_{2} p_{i}\) :
-
Represents entropy increment
- \(C_{{\text{u}}}\) :
-
Coefficient of uniformity
- \(H_{\max }\) :
-
The maximum value of grading entropy based on principal of maximum entropy
- \(\Delta H_{\max }\) :
-
The maximum value of entropy increment based on principal of maximum entropy
- \(\Delta h_{{{\text{max}}}}\) :
-
The maximum value of normalized entropy increment based on principal of maximum entropy
- \(h_{0}\) :
-
Normalized base entropy
- \(\Delta h\) :
-
Normalized entropy increment
- \(\Delta h^{\prime }\) :
-
The revised \(\Delta h\)
- \(\Delta h_{{\text{d}}}\) :
-
The value of \(\Delta h\) on the demarcating line
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Acknowledgement
Financial supports from the research programs: “Key R&D Program of Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region, China (No. 2018BFH03010)” and “Helanshan Mountain Scholarship” of Ningxia University China and “Faculty Development Program Scholarship” of University of Engineering and Technology Lahore (Pakistan) are gratefully acknowledged. Productive discussions with Distinguished Professor Buddhima Indraratna at University of Wollongong Australia are heartily appreciated.
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Appendix 1: Principal of Maximum Entropy
Appendix 1: Principal of Maximum Entropy
According to the principle of maximum entropy, the maximum H can be achieved using Lagrange multipliers as follows [22]:
where \(L_{{{\text{Max}} H}}\) is the Lagrange function of maximum H, while \(\lambda\) is the Lagrange multiplier of the corresponding constraint (\(\mathop \sum \nolimits_{i = 1}^{N} \left( {p_{i} - 1} \right)\)). By differentiating the Lagrange function with respect to the relative frequencies \({ }p_{i}\), and equating the derivative to zero, Eq. (18) takes the following form:
Simplifying Eq. (19) further to obtain,
Following the same procedure as maximum H, the maximum \(\Delta\) H can be obtained from the following steps:
where \(L_{{{\text{Max}}\,\Delta H}}\) is the Lagrange function of maximum \(\Delta H\). The maximum \(\Delta h\) can be obtained from the same procedure as follows:
where \(L_{\Delta h}\) is the Lagrange function of maximum \(\Delta h\).
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Israr, J., Zhang, G. Geometrical assessment of internal instability potential of granular soils based on grading entropy. Acta Geotech. 16, 1961–1970 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-020-01118-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-020-01118-0