The Role of Surface Infiltration in Hydromechanical Coupling Effects in an Unsaturated Porous Medium of Semi-Infinite Extent

Abstract

Rainfall infiltration into an unsaturated region of the earth's surface is a pervasive natural phenomenon. During the rainfall-induced seepage process, the soil skeleton can deform and the permeability can change with the water content in the unsaturated porous medium. A coupled water infiltration and deformation formulation is used to examine a problem related to the mechanics of a two-dimensional region of semi-infinite extent. The van Genuchten model is used to represent the soil-water characteristic curve. The model, incorporating coupled infiltration and deformation, was developed to resolve the coupled problem in a semi-infinite domain based on numerical methods. The numerical solution is verified by the analytical solution when the coupled effects in an unsaturated medium of semi-infinite extent are considered. The computational results show that a numerical procedure can be employed to examine the semi-infinite unsaturated seepage incorporating coupled water infiltration and deformation. The analysis indicates that the coupling effect is significantly influenced by the boundary conditions of the problem and varies with the duration of water infiltration.

Modeling of Transient Flow in Unsaturated Geomaterials for Rainfall-Induced Landslides Using a Novel Spacetime Collocation Method

“…Numerical approaches to the modeling of various unsaturated geofluid phenomena using the mesh-based methods, such as the finite difference method (FDM) or the finite element method (FEM), have been studied extensively [24,25]. In spite of the success of using the conventional mesh-generated methods as effective numerical tools for the solution of transient flow problems in unsaturated soils, there remains growing interest in the development of novel advanced computational methods.…”

Cavity Flow Permeability Testing of an Intact Granite

“…Permeability is a key parameter governing many hydro-geological, geoenvironmental and geomechanical endeavours. These can include general problems related to flow and geologic processes in intact, fractured and porous media with random with random pore networks , groundwater hydrology and estimation of yield, pumping rates in aquifers used as hydrologic basins 5,[26][27][28][29][30][31][32][33] , ground subsidence due to water and resource extraction [34][35][36][37][38][39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49] , water level fluctuations in geologic formations due to earthquakes and tidal effects [50][51][52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61] , groundwater and geomechanics issues in geologic sequestration 48,49,56,[62][63][64][65][66][67]…”