Journal article
Effects of steel pile corrosion on permeability of hydraulic barriers
Environmental geotechnics, v 7(8), pp 554-565
01 Dec 2020
Abstract
An increasing economic interest leads to construction on old landfills and waste deposits, raising questions about potential contamination of groundwater due to installation of piles through clay barriers. The current consensus in the geotechnical practice, that penetration of clayey hydraulic barriers by driven steel piles with closed conical tips should not cause pollution of the underlying aquifers, is challenged in this paper. Consolidometer and flow-column tests on clays with iron-rich pore fluid were performed for the assessment of pile corrosion effects on hydraulic barriers. Based on the results of these tests, a constitutive model for the coupled chemomechanical behaviour was modified to account for different pore-fluid chemistry and incorporated into a finite-element code to solve the problem of iron diffusion originating from a corroding source in a case study on groundwater pollution. The combined action of diffusion, corrosion and increased convection resulted in an overall increased transport rate and therefore a significantly earlier arrival of critical concentrations of the pollutant in the aquifer that was initially protected by a hydraulic barrier. Once this barrier is perforated by foundation piles subjected to corrosion, small concentrations can arrive in the aquifer up to four times earlier than implied by the initially low hydraulic conductivity.
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Details
- Title
- Effects of steel pile corrosion on permeability of hydraulic barriers
- Creators
- Pascal Minder - Swiss Fed Inst Technol, Inst Geotech Engn, Zurich, SwitzerlandMichael Plotze - Swiss Fed Inst Technol, Inst Geotech Engn, Zurich, SwitzerlandJoseph Hughes - Drexel UniversityAlexander M. Puzrin - Swiss Fed Inst Technol, Inst Geotech Engn, Zurich, Switzerland
- Publication Details
- Environmental geotechnics, v 7(8), pp 554-565
- Publisher
- Ice Publishing
- Number of pages
- 12
- Grant note
- 200021-137689 / Swiss National Science Foundation; Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF); European Commission
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Civil, Architectural, and Environmental Engineering
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000595718300004
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85097350054
- Other Identifier
- 991019169527404721
InCites Highlights
Data related to this publication, from InCites Benchmarking & Analytics tool:
- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- International collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Engineering, Geological