Behavior of soil-water pressure profile in response to sudden unloading : horizontal case

Abstract EN

The behavior of the pressure profile at early times in an initially saturated porous medium was considered in relation to variation that occur during sudden changes in the position of the water table.

In a pumped uncon- fined aquifer a sudden change of the pressure head is encountered which assimilates with consolidation type experiments.

Extensive experiments were carried out to seek an explanation of this phenomenon.

The results obtained demonstrate that the pressure dissipation in an initially saturated soil column at the early times will fit quite reasonably a diffusion type equation for both cases with an initially specified uniform and triangular hydrostatic pressure distribution.