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Seepage
In soil mechanics, seepage is the movement of water through soil. If fluid pressures in a soil deposit are uniformly increasing with depth according to u = \rho_w g z_w, where z_w is the depth below the water table, then hydrostatic conditions will prevail and the fluids will be flowing through the soil. However, if the water table is sloping or there is a perched water table as indicated in the accompanying sketch, then seepage will occur. For steady state seepage, the seepage velocities are not varying with time. If the water tables are changing levels with time, or if the soil is in the process of consolidation, then steady state conditions do not apply. Darcy's law Darcy's law states that the volume of flow of the pore fluid through a porous medium per unit time is proportional to the rate of change of excess fluid pressure with distance. The constant of proportionality includes the viscosity of the fluid and the intrinsic permeability of the soil. For the simple case of a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flownet
A flow net is a graphical representation of two-dimensional steady-state groundwater flow through aquifers. Construction of a flow net is often used for solving groundwater flow problems where the geometry makes analytical solutions impractical. The method is often used in civil engineering, hydrogeology or soil mechanics as a first check for problems of flow under hydraulic structures like dams or sheet pile walls. As such, a grid obtained by drawing a series of equipotential lines is called a flow net. The flow net is an important tool in analysing two-dimensional irrotational flow problems. Flow net technique is a graphical representation method. Basic method The method consists of filling the flow area with stream and equipotential lines, which are everywhere perpendicular to each other, making a curvilinear grid. Typically there are two surfaces (boundaries) which are at constant values of potential or hydraulic head (upstream and downstream ends), and the other surfaces ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil Mechanics
Soil mechanics is a branch of soil physics and applied mechanics that describes the behavior of soils. It differs from fluid mechanics and solid mechanics in the sense that soils consist of a heterogeneous mixture of fluids (usually air and water) and particles (usually clay, silt, sand, and gravel) but soil may also contain organic matter, organic solids and other matter.Mitchell, J.K., and Soga, K. (2005) Fundamentals of soil behavior, Third edition, John Wiley and Sons, Inc., .Powrie, W., Spon Press, 2004, ''Soil Mechanics – 2nd ed'' A Guide to Soil Mechanics, Bolton, Malcolm, Macmillan Press, 1979. Along with rock mechanics, soil mechanics provides the theoretical basis for analysis in geotechnical engineering, a subdiscipline of civil engineering, and engineering geology, a subdiscipline of geology. Soil mechanics is used to analyze the deformations of and flow of fluids within natural and man-made structures that are supported on or made of soil, or structures that ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Flownet Pumping Well
A flow net is a graphical representation of two-dimensional steady-state groundwater flow through aquifers. Construction of a flow net is often used for solving groundwater flow problems where the geometry makes analytical solutions impractical. The method is often used in civil engineering, hydrogeology or soil mechanics as a first check for problems of flow under hydraulic structures like dams or sheet pile walls. As such, a grid obtained by drawing a series of equipotential lines is called a flow net. The flow net is an important tool in analysing two-dimensional irrotational flow problems. Flow net technique is a graphical representation method. Basic method The method consists of filling the flow area with stream and equipotential lines, which are everywhere perpendicular to each other, making a curvilinear grid. Typically there are two surfaces (boundaries) which are at constant values of potential or hydraulic head (upstream and downstream ends), and the other surfaces ar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sinkhole
A sinkhole is a depression or hole in the ground caused by some form of collapse of the surface layer. The term is sometimes used to refer to doline, enclosed depressions that are also known as shakeholes, and to openings where surface water enters into underground passages known as ''ponor'', swallow hole or swallet. A ''cenote'' is a type of sinkhole that exposes groundwater underneath. ''Sink'', and ''stream sink'' are more general terms for sites that drain surface water, possibly by infiltration into sediment or crumbled rock. Most sinkholes are caused by Karst topography, karst processes – the chemical dissolution of carbonate rocks, collapse or suffosion processes. Sinkholes are usually circular and vary in size from tens to hundreds of Metre, meters both in diameter and depth, and vary in form from soil-lined bowls to bedrock-edged chasms. Sinkholes may form gradually or suddenly, and are found worldwide. Formation Natural processes Sinkholes may capture surf ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Water Table
The water table is the upper surface of the phreatic zone or zone of saturation. The zone of saturation is where the pores and fractures of the ground are saturated with groundwater, which may be fresh, saline, or brackish, depending on the locality. It can also be simply explained as the depth below which the ground is saturated. The portion above the water table is the vadose zone. It may be visualized as the "surface" of the subsurface materials that are saturated with groundwater in a given vicinity. In coarse soils, the water table settles at the surface where the water Hydraulic head, pressure head is equal to the atmospheric pressure (where gauge pressure = 0). In soils where capillary action is strong, the water table is pulled upward, forming a capillary fringe. The groundwater may be from precipitation or from more distant groundwater flowing into the aquifer. In areas with sufficient precipitation, water infiltrates through pore spaces in the soil, passing through t ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Soil Liquefaction
Soil liquefaction occurs when a cohesionless saturated or partially saturated soil substantially loses Shear strength (soil), strength and stiffness in response to an applied Shear stress, stress such as shaking during an earthquake or other sudden change in stress condition, in which material that is ordinarily a solid behaves like a liquid. In soil mechanics, the term "liquefied" was first used by Allen Hazen in reference to the 1918 failure of the Calaveras Dam in California. He described the mechanism of flow liquefaction of the embankment dam as: The phenomenon is most often observed in saturated, loose (low density or uncompacted), sandy soils. This is because a loose sand has a tendency to Compressibility, compress when a force, load is applied. Dense sands, by contrast, tend to expand in volume or 'Reynolds' dilatancy, dilate'. If the soil is saturated by water, a condition that often exists when the soil is below the water table or sea level, then water fills the gap ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Erosion
Erosion is the action of surface processes (such as Surface runoff, water flow or wind) that removes soil, Rock (geology), rock, or dissolved material from one location on the Earth's crust#Crust, Earth's crust and then sediment transport, transports it to another location where it is deposit (geology), deposited. Erosion is distinct from weathering which involves no movement. Removal of rock or soil as clastic sediment is referred to as ''physical'' or ''mechanical'' erosion; this contrasts with ''chemical'' erosion, where soil or rock material is removed from an area by Solvation, dissolution. Eroded sediment or solutes may be transported just a few millimetres, or for thousands of kilometres. Agents of erosion include rainfall; bedrock wear in rivers; coastal erosion by the sea and Wind wave, waves; glacier, glacial Plucking (glaciation), plucking, Abrasion (geology), abrasion, and scour; areal flooding; Aeolian processes, wind abrasion; groundwater processes; and Mass wastin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sheet Piling
Retaining walls are relatively rigid walls used for supporting soil laterally so that it can be retained at different levels on the two sides. Retaining walls are structures designed to restrain soil to a slope that it would not naturally keep to (typically a steep, near-vertical or vertical slope). They are used to bound soils between two different elevations often in areas of inconveniently steep terrain in areas where the landscape needs to be shaped severely and engineered for more specific purposes like hillside farming or roadway overpasses. A retaining wall that retains soil on the backside and water on the frontside is called a seawall or a bulkhead. Definition A retaining wall is designed to hold in place a mass of earth or the like, such as the edge of a terrace or excavation. The structure is constructed to resist the lateral pressure of soil when there is a desired change in ground elevation that exceeds the angle of repose of the soil. A basement wall is thus one ki ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Laplace's Equation
In mathematics and physics, Laplace's equation is a second-order partial differential equation named after Pierre-Simon Laplace, who first studied its properties in 1786. This is often written as \nabla^2\! f = 0 or \Delta f = 0, where \Delta = \nabla \cdot \nabla = \nabla^2 is the Laplace operator,The delta symbol, Δ, is also commonly used to represent a finite change in some quantity, for example, \Delta x = x_1 - x_2. Its use to represent the Laplacian should not be confused with this use. \nabla \cdot is the divergence operator (also symbolized "div"), \nabla is the gradient operator (also symbolized "grad"), and f (x, y, z) is a twice-differentiable real-valued function. The Laplace operator therefore maps a scalar function to another scalar function. If the right-hand side is specified as a given function, h(x, y, z), we have \Delta f = h This is called Poisson's equation, a generalization of Laplace's equation. Laplace's equation and Poisson's equation are the simp ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Piezometer
Pressure measurement is the measurement of an applied force by a fluid (liquid or gas) on a surface. Pressure is typically measured in unit of measurement, units of force per unit of surface area. Many techniques have been developed for the measurement of pressure and vacuum. Instruments used to measure and display pressure mechanically are called pressure gauges, vacuum gauges or compound gauges (vacuum & pressure). The widely used Bourdon gauge is a mechanical device, which both measures and indicates and is probably the best known type of gauge. A vacuum gauge is used to measure pressures lower than the ambient atmospheric pressure, which is set as the zero point, in negative values (for instance, −1 bar or −760 mmHg equals total vacuum). Most gauges measure pressure relative to atmospheric pressure as the zero point, so this form of reading is simply referred to as "gauge pressure". However, anything greater than total vacuum is technically a form of pressure. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Hydraulic Gradient
Hydraulic head or piezometric head is a measurement related to liquid pressure (normalized by specific weight) and the liquid elevation above a vertical datum., 410 pages. See pp. 43–44., 650 pages. See p. 22, eq.3.2a. It is usually measured as an equivalent liquid surface elevation, expressed in units of length, at the entrance (or bottom) of a piezometer. In an aquifer, it can be calculated from the depth to water in a piezometric well (a specialized water well), and given information of the piezometer's elevation and screen depth. Hydraulic head can similarly be measured in a column of water using a standpipe piezometer by measuring the height of the water surface in the tube relative to a common datum. The hydraulic head can be used to determine a ''hydraulic gradient'' between two or more points. Definition In fluid dynamics, the ''head'' at some point in an incompressible (constant density) flow is equal to the height of a static column of fluid whose pressure at the ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Total Head
Bernoulli's principle is a key concept in fluid dynamics that relates pressure, speed and height. For example, for a fluid flowing horizontally Bernoulli's principle states that an increase in the speed occurs simultaneously with a decrease in pressure The principle is named after the Swiss mathematician and physicist Daniel Bernoulli, who published it in his book ''Hydrodynamica'' in 1738. Although Bernoulli deduced that pressure decreases when the flow speed increases, it was Leonhard Euler in 1752 who derived Bernoulli's equation in its usual form. Bernoulli's principle can be derived from the principle of conservation of energy. This states that, in a steady flow, the sum of all forms of energy in a fluid is the same at all points that are free of viscous forces. This requires that the sum of kinetic energy, potential energy and internal energy remains constant. Thus an increase in the speed of the fluid—implying an increase in its kinetic energy—occurs with a simultan ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
