Applications of the Porous-Solid Model

In the previous chapter, a probabilistic porous-solid model adequate for the simulation of soil-water retention curves of soils was developed. In this chapter, the model is used to interpret more realistically the results of mercury intrusion porosimetry experiments. Moreover, it is used to obtain the pore size distribution of different soils while using both boundary branches of the retention curve as data. The numerical and experimental comparisons for different soils show that the model approximately reproduces the pore size distribution obtained from mercury intrusion porosimetry tests. Finally, the procedure to adjust the numerical and experimental soil-water retention curves in order to obtain the pore size distribution of soils is presented herein.

Keywords: Mercury intrusion porosimetry tests, scanning electron micrographs, pore size distribution, grain size distribution, superficial tension, contact angle, soil-water retention curve, critical radius, relative volume, macropores, mesopores, micropores, hydro-mechanical coupling, soil mixtures, logarithmic normal distribution, mean size, standard deviation.