A soil water retention equation of bentonites used in deep geological repositories
Description
The Fredlund-Xing (FX) model was chosen to develop the proposed equation. Pictures and parameters-fitting producted by OriginPro. 1. the comparisons between all parameters of the FX model and characteristic of experimental values on the water retention behavior of confined bentonite samples were found. 1.1 because residual suction only influences on correction factor of the FX model, the relationship between correction factor C(ψ) and suction ψ was conducted and shown in Fig.2. 1.2 Fig.3 shows the fitting curve at 20 °C along with the experimental values of saturated water content as a function of dry densities for compacted GMZ01 bentonite. 1.3 Fig.4(a) has given the fitting results along with the experimental values of air-entry values to total void ratios on compacted samples for three popular types of bentonite at the room temperature. 1.4 n_f and m_f influence on SWRCs of the FX model separately. 2. The proposed water retention equation is validated against experimental datum from literatures on three popular types of bentonite (GMZ01 bentonite, FEBEX bentonite, and MX-80 bentonite).