Prions enter the environment from infected hosts, bind to a wide range of soil and soil minerals, and remain highly infectious. Environmental sources of prions almost certainly contribute to the transmission of chronic wasting disease in cervids and scrapie in sheep and goats. While much is known about the introduction of prions into the environment and their interaction with soil, relatively l...

A relevant part of the geotechnical infrastructure in north Europe and overseas is built on soft organic soils, including peat. Peat extremely vulnerable to climate-related hazards as increased temperature accelerates drying, shrinkage decomposition matter. exhibits dramatic changes volume with water content. As material deforms, pore space evolves retention response. The evolution leads a hyst...

This study investigated the chloride penetration of surface-treated concrete in natural and accelerated environments. A part of a real concrete port, including the beams and the columns, was investigated. Concrete specimens cast together with the concrete port were transported to the lab and subjected to wetting and drying cycles for accelerating the ingression of chloride ion. Chloride concent...

Soil aggregate stability is an essential soil property, influencing many soil behaviors. However, the relationships between drying and wetting cycles and aggregate stability dynamics with different initial aggregate size classes have not been clarified. This study was conducted to investigate the effects of drying and wetting cycles on aggregate stability under different breakdown mechanisms, a...

Agricultural soils undergo periods of saturation followed by desiccation throughout the course a growing season. It is believed that these wetting and drying influence soil structure may affect rate detachment. Thus, an experiment was conducted to investigate disturbed (soil sieved simulate tillage) subjected various cycles, on bulk density resistance detachment with runoff. Seven treatments co...

A simple formalism is presented to model the behaviour of expansive clays. Two levels of structure are considered. The behaviour of the macrostructure follows the model developed for unsaturated materials by Alonso et al. [Géotechnique 40 (3) (1990) 405–430]. The behaviour of the microstructure is adapted from the work of Gens and Alonso [Can. Geotech. J. 29 (1992) 1013–1032] in order to includ...

A new constitutive model for the soil-water retention behaviour of unsaturated soils is proposed, able to reproduce main drying and wetting paths, cyclic its dependence on specific volume. The most significant aspect inclusion evolution, with volume, degree saturation when suction tends zero in paths considering presence entrapped air bubbles. used success drying/wetting cycles two Pearl clay s...

In this paper, a bespoke stress and temperature controlled direct shear apparatus to test soil-geosynthetics interfaces is introduced. By adopting the apparatus, series of ‘rapid loading’ tests creep were conducted on Clay – Geosynthetic Drainage layer (GDL) assess functionality apparatus. The experimental results indicate that, modified can allow deformation behaviour under environmental durin...

Abstract In many geotechnical applications, especially in the study of weather-induced landslides, a reliable soil hydraulic characterization unsaturated conditions is required. Currently, experimental techniques that neglect hysteresis represent greatest limitation to landslide forecasting. this paper, procedure obtain an on natural pyroclastic samples proposed and verified. The approach enabl...