Suffusion assessment methods: a critical review

Conference Publication ResearchOnline@JCU
To, Peter;Scheuermann, Alexander
Abstract

Although internal erosion is often used as a synonym for piping by engineers, this terminology includes several types of subsurface erosion processes and their divisions. Suffusion is arguably the most complicated type of internal erosion processes and, hence, hard to predict. The phenomenon occurs when fine particles are transported by seepage through pore chains formed by coarse particles. Therefore, traditional approaches for assessing susceptibility to suffusion often correlate fine and coarse fractions. Some methods use critical points of the particle size distribution as references, while some other methods attempted to separate those two fractions. Recently completed studies pointed out other decisive factors, such as constriction size distribution, relative density, particle shapes, hydraulic gradient rate, and anisotropy. However, in most cases experimental studies have been the basis for the corresponding methods, which restricts their applicability to the ones for the tested soils only. There is a need for a systematic classification of the underlying methods to understand the current progress and address the gap for future studies. Based on the mindset of existing approaches, this paper presents a comprehensive review of assessment methods for suffusion.

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10th International Conference on Scour and Erosion

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16

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Online

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International Society for Soil Mechanics and Geotechnical Engineering

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Arlington, VA, USA

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