Publications related to Soil physics

Pore-pressure coefficients for unsaturated soils: generalized effective stress approach

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Angelica Tuttolomondo

Geotechnical problems with total stress changes occurring rapidly relative to the soil consolidation time can be conveniently addressed using an effective stress-based approach. For saturated states, analytical formulations of pore-pressure coefficients ad ...

CANADIAN SCIENCE PUBLISHING2023

Life cycle environmental assessment of retaining walls in unsaturated soils

Alessio Ferrari, Gianluca Speranza

Retaining structures above groundwater level support soils that are usually in a state of partial saturation and subject to the actions of atmospheric agents. The current design approach considers the possible extremes of soil conditions - either totally d ...

ELSEVIER2022

Role of Stress History on the Swelling-Shrinkage Behavior of Compacted Scaly Clay

Alessio Ferrari

Compacted scaly clays are complex geomaterials widely used for the realization of dam cores and waste dump liners. This research aims to investigate the swelling/shrinkage behavior of these geomaterials subjected in an oedometric cell to complex hydromecha ...

ASCE-AMER SOC CIVIL ENGINEERS2022

Soil-structure interaction of surface footings

Lyesse Laloui, Cristiano Garbellini

Limit-state analysis of soil-structure interacting systems is a classical problem in theoretical and applied soil mechanics. Usually, the capacities of both components are evaluated separately. However, it is well known that soil-structure interaction play ...

2021

Improved Near-Surface Continental Climate in IPSL-CM6A-LR by Combined Evolutions of Atmospheric and Land Surface Physics

Etienne Gabriel Henri Vignon

This work is motivated by the identification of the land-atmosphere interactions as one of the key sources of uncertainty in climate change simulations. It documents new developments in related processes, namely, boundary layer/convection/clouds parameteri ...

2020

Geotechnical and environmental performance of retaining structures in unsaturated soils

Gianluca Speranza

Presently, environmental issues are considered as critical aspects concerning the market competitiveness in the building and construction sector. However, the construction sector is regarded as one of the main areas contributing to CO2 emissions and resour ...

EPFL2020

TERRE project: interplay between unsaturated soil mechanics and low-carbon geotechnical engineering

Alessio Ferrari, Jacopo Zannin, Gianluca Speranza

The geotechnical construction industry is a major component of the overall construction sector and is strategically important in infrastructure development (transportation, flood and landslide protection, building foundations, waste disposal). Although ind ...

E D P SCIENCES2020

An experimental investigation on the water retention behaviour of a silty soil for the computation of the lateral earth thrust on a retaining wall

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Gianluca Speranza

Retaining structures often interact with soils in unsaturated conditions and their performance is influenced by environmental actions. Currently, geotechnical analysis and design approaches mainly consider the soils either totally dry or totally saturated. ...

E3S Web of Conferences2019

Model of crop growth, water flow, and solute transport in layered soil

David Andrew Barry, Jiancheng Yang

Agro-ecohydrological models are essential for managing scarce water resources and ensuring crop productivity. Here, a one-dimensional agro-ecohydrological model, LAWSTAC, capable of simulating water and solute transport in layered soil coupled with crop gr ...

2019

Soil Moisture Estimation by SAR in Alpine Fields Using Gaussian Process Regressor Trained by Model Simulations

Jean-Philippe Thiran, Jelena Stamenkovic

In this paper, we address the problem of retrieving soil moisture over a grassland alpine area from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data using a statistical algorithm trained by simulations of a physical model. A time series of C-band VV-polarized Wide Swat ...

Ieee-Inst Electrical Electronics Engineers Inc2017

Simulating the influence of snow surface processes on soil moisture dynamics and streamflow generation in an alpine catchment

Michael Lehning, Nander Wever, Francesco Comola, Mathias Thierry Pierre Bavay

The assessment of flood risks in alpine, snow-covered catchments requires an understanding of the linkage between the snow cover, soil and discharge in the stream network. Here, we apply the comprehensive, distributed model Alpine3D to investigate the role ...

Copernicus GmbH2017

Modelling landslides in unsaturated slopes subjected to rainfall infiltration using material point method

Lyesse Laloui, Alessio Ferrari, Samila Sanjeevanie Bandara

This paper presents a dynamic fully coupled formulation for saturated and unsaturated soils that undergo large deformations based on material point method. Governing equations are applied to porous material while considering it as a continuum in which the ...

Wiley-Blackwell2016

SEHR-ECHO v1.0: a Spatially Explicit Hydrologic Response model for ecohydrologic applications

Andrea Rinaldo, Enrico Bertuzzo, Bettina Schaefli, Ludovico Nicotina, Cédric Imfeld, Pierfrancesco Da Ronco

This paper presents the Spatially Explicit Hydrologic Response (SEHR) model developed at the Laboratory of Ecohydrology of the Ecole Polytechnique Fédérale de Lausanne for the simulation of hydrological processes at the catchment scale. The key concept of ...

2014

Precipitation, soil moisture and runoff variability in a small river catchment (Ardeche, France) during HyMeX Special Observation Period 1

Jacopo Grazioli, Timothy Hugh Raupach

Flash flooding is a potentially destructive natural hazard known to occur in the Cevennes-Vivarais region in southern France. HyMeX (Hydrological Cycle in the Mediterranean Experiment) is an international program focused on understanding the hydrological c ...

Elsevier2014

Migration of volatile organic contaminations (VOCs) through a deforming clay liner

David Andrew Barry

A fully coupled thermal–hydraulic–mechanical–chemical (THMC) model was proposed to describe the migration of volatile organic contaminations (VOCs) in unsaturated landfill liners. The vertical soil stress, capillary pressure, air pressure, temperature incr ...

Elsevier2013

Chloride circulation in a lowland catchment and the formulation of transport by travel time distributions

Andrea Rinaldo, Paolo Benettin, Gianluca Botter

Travel times are fundamental catchment descriptors that blend key information about storage, geochemistry, flow pathways and sources of water into a coherent mathematical framework. Here we analyze travel time distributions (TTDs) (and related attributes) ...

Amer Geophysical Union2013

Infiltration in soils with a saturated surface

David Andrew Barry, Marc Parlange

An earlier infiltration equation relied on curve fitting of infiltration data for the determination of one of the parameters, which limits its usefulness in practice. This handicap is removed here, and the parameter is now evaluated by linking it directly ...

American Geophysical Union2013

Macropores and water flow in soils revisited

The original review of macropores and water flow in soils by Beven and Germann is now 30 years old and has become one of the most highly cited papers in hydrology. This paper attempts to review the progress in observations and theoretical reasoning about p ...

Amer Geophysical Union2013

Impacts of irrigation with industrial treated wastewater on soil properties

André Mermoud, Pascal Boivin

Wastewater reuse in agriculture is a widespread practice in developing countries, especially in urban areas where water shortage and poverty encourage people to use that marginal resource. Raw or treated wastewaters are used by farmers, but even treated wa ...

Elsevier Science Bv2013

Above- and belowground linkages in Sphagnum peatland: climate warming affects plant-microbial interactions

Alexandre Buttler, Edward Mitchell, Vincent Eric Jules Jassey

Peatlands contain approximately one third of all soil organic carbon (SOC). Warming can alter above- and belowground linkages that regulate soil organic carbon dynamics and C-balance in peatlands. Here we examine the multiyear impact of in situ experimenta ...

Wiley-Blackwell2013