Moisture drainage under unsaturated soil conditions with the aid of enhanced lateral drainage (ELD) geotextiles
| dc.contributor.advisor | Zornberg, Jorge G. | |
| dc.creator | El Hachem, Anthony Ghassan | |
| dc.date.accessioned | 2018-10-17T22:54:08Z | |
| dc.date.available | 2018-10-17T22:54:08Z | |
| dc.date.created | 2018-08 | |
| dc.date.issued | 2018-10-04 | |
| dc.date.submitted | August 2018 | |
| dc.date.updated | 2018-10-17T22:54:08Z | |
| dc.description.abstract | Drainage under unsaturated soil conditions has always been a challenge for many civil engineering applications where removal of this extra moisture would improve the performance of the system. The suction in the small pores of the fine-grained soil impedes the water from flowing into the drain before the medium becomes saturated. Meanwhile, a recent advancement in the geosnthetic industry has led to the production of a woven geotextile with Enhanced Lateral Drainage (ELD) capabilities. This innovative product contains wicking fibers that form capillary tubes able to wick moisture from the surrounding unsaturated medium. After analytically predicting the flow capacity provided by the fibers, four experimental setups were established to assess the performance of the ELD geotextile when placed in a soil medium subject to limited moisture supply. The results clearly demonstrate the ability of the wicking geotextile to decrease the moisture from the surrounding soil up to a limiting suction value. The ELD geotextile was then tested in a pavement section subject to moisture increase from a shallow phreatic surface. An accelerated pavement testing program was performed at the University of Texas laboratories by loading a pavement section via a Model Mobile Load Simulator (MMLS3). Three different configurations were tested with wicking and conventional geotextiles installed at the subgrade and base interface. The test results showed that the section with the ELD geotextile overlain by a nonwoven fabric had the best performance. | |
| dc.description.department | Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering | |
| dc.format.mimetype | application/pdf | |
| dc.identifier | doi:10.15781/T21R6NK4N | |
| dc.identifier.uri | http://hdl.handle.net/2152/69000 | |
| dc.language.iso | en | |
| dc.subject | Geosynthetics | |
| dc.subject | Drainage | |
| dc.subject | Unsaturated soil | |
| dc.subject | Accelerated pavement testing | |
| dc.title | Moisture drainage under unsaturated soil conditions with the aid of enhanced lateral drainage (ELD) geotextiles | |
| dc.type | Thesis | |
| dc.type.material | text | |
| thesis.degree.department | Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering | |
| thesis.degree.discipline | Civil Engineering | |
| thesis.degree.grantor | The University of Texas at Austin | |
| thesis.degree.level | Masters | |
| thesis.degree.name | Master of Science in Engineering |