Hydraulic dissolution of soil

• Applicant: Professor Dr.-Ing. Jürgen Grabe
• Subject Area: Geotechnics, Hydraulic Engineering
• Term: from 2014 to 2017
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 260695819

The hydraulic dissolution of soil is crucial to a number of procedures and methods.A common example is the method of jet grouting, which uses high pressure streams to break up and cement the soil. It can be applied to a wide range of problems and construction. However, there are still some challenges to be met, manly considering the impact of the water jet on the soil, as well as its expansion. The later depends on many factors, including process and construction parameters as well as the properties of soil. The main objective of this study is to represent process of soil dissolution using a fluid jet and determine the factors of impact on the jet expansion in the soil by the means of computer simulation, i.e. prior to construction. The simulations employ the framework of the smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). This is a meshless particle method that has not only been established in the last few decades for physical and hydrodynamic modeling but has also proven to have a great potential in handling soil behavior. SPH has therefore been successfully applied to a vast range of problems in both fluid and solid mechanics. Recent research results suggest that the method is quite suitable for the modeling of geotechnical phenomena. For the purpose of this project a constitutive equation and a yield criterion for soil are to be implemented in the SPH and also validated using experimental data, following the simulation of a jet grouting, subsea cable installation and other geotechnical processes considering soil-fluid interaction. The results are supposed to provide information about the jet expansion and its relation to the soil and construction properties and also contribute to the economic feasibility and quality control of the geotechnical methods.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants