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Approach to determining the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of GMZ bentonite using the NMR technique

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Abstract

Incorporating the nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) technique, a newly developed infiltration instrument constructed from polytetrafluoroethylene is designed for the rapid determination of unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of bentonite materials. The proposed approach is founded on measuring the variation of the NMR signal in numerous cross sections of the specimen during the infiltration test, enabling the determination of water content distribution. Through integration with the instantaneous profile method, unsaturated hydraulic conductivity can be obtained using Darcy's law. The mechanism underlying the observed U-shaped trend of unsaturated hydraulic coefficient with decreasing suction can be attributed to the relatively high value controlled by water vapor diffusion at higher suction stages, as well as the hydraulic conductivity increasing near saturation, similar to the behavior of most unsaturated soils. The consistency of test results with those acquired from conventional measurements, regarding amplitude level and evolutionary pattern, provides evidence of the reliability of the proposed method. The primary improvement lies in the real-time acquisition of the water content profile using the spatial encoding technique in the NMR in the infiltration test. Simultaneously, the approach substantially reduces the test duration from thousands of hours to dozens of hours while maintaining measurement accuracy.

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Acknowledgements

The authors acknowledge the research funding provided by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41372270 and 42272324).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. College of Civil Engineering, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Bao Chen, Rongsheng Deng & Kang Zhang

  2. Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of Ministry of Education, Tongji University, Shanghai, 200092, China

    Bao Chen, Rongsheng Deng & Kang Zhang

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  1. Bao Chen
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Correspondence to Rongsheng Deng.

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Chen, B., Deng, R. & Zhang, K. Approach to determining the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity of GMZ bentonite using the NMR technique. Acta Geotech. 19, 2873–2888 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11440-023-02071-4

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