An insight on the experimental volumetric behaviour of gassy soils

Abstract

Induced Partial Saturation (IPS) is one of the most innovative and promising countermeasures to mitigate soil liquefaction risk. Mechanical benefits of air/gas bubbles occluded within the pore water have been studied in the last decade through undrained cyclic tests on quasi-saturated (gassy) soils, demonstrating that the increased pore fluid compressibility prevents liquefaction triggering. The greater compressibility of the air bubbles rules the volumetric strains of gassy soils during seismic shaking reducing the build up of the pore water pressure. Mele et al., (2022) verified that, at the laboratory scale, due to lower frequencies of the applied cyclic loads, a non-negligible amount of soil volumetric strains is due to dissolution of air bubbles in the water (εv,diss). The outcomes of some simple compression tests carried out on a two-phase medium made of air/water confirm that such amount cannot be correctly computed with the Henry’s law, which considers the dissolution process of air into water in the hypothesis of continuous air phase. Experimental evidences highlighted that εv,diss is mainly ruled by the continuity of air phase (linked to the chosen experimental procedure), and it exceeds the theoretical previsions when air phase is discontinuous with single bubbles occluded in the fluid phase.