• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.103-114
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• 2002

Knowledge of soil water retention characteristic is essential for many problems involving water flow and organic solute transport in unsaturated soils. A physico-empirical approach based on the translation of the particle-size distribution (PSD) into a corresponding water retention curve has been accomplished by others using the concept that the pore-size distribution is directly related to PSD. This approach implies that details of a PSD curve may affect the estimation of water retention characteristic (WRC). To determine whether the WRC estimation using the Arya-Paris model could be affected by the selection of a PSD model, four PSD models with one to four fitting parameters were used. The Jaky model with only one fitting parameter had greater WRC estimation ability than other models with greater number of fitting parameters. The better performance of the Jaky model may be explained by the effect of soil structure in field soils.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.30 no.1C
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• pp.53-63
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• 2010

Since the water retention curve is considered as a major parameter to evaluate the unsaturated ground or soils, overburden pressure and clay content on soils underneath ground surface have not been considered for estimating water retention characteristics. Therefore, a need exists that the effect of overburden pressure and clay content on water retention characteristics was assessed in typical weathered soils found in Korea. Soil-Water Characteristic Curve and the unsaturated hydraulic conductivity were estimated using water retention characteristics under the condition of different overburden pressure, clay content, and de-saturation path. Then, these effects are evaluated with the results of SWCC tests from the laboratory. In addition to that, the unsaturated moisture capacity and diffusivity of each case is discussed.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.32 no.4C
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• pp.169-175
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• 2012

Soil water retention characteristics are influenced by factors of the confining stress and hysteresis in the variably saturated soil. In the description of effective stress based on hydraulic characteristics, the contribution of a matric suction to effective stress then varies with depth or is different between the processes of infiltration and evaporation. Unsaturated effective stress can be described based on suction stress characteristic curve, in which a representative soil water retention curve is required to evaluate. Pressure palate extractor tests under various confining stresses were performed and the hysteresis of drying and wetting process was also acquired. In the process of drying or wetting, a unique relationship has been estimated on the effective volumetric water content and the matric suction, which defines suction stress characteristic curve. In the unsaturated shear strength from triaxial tests, the suction stress and the effective stress were evaluated by matric suctions. The failure envelop by effective stress based on soil water retention characteristics was unique and the same as the saturated one. The measured suction stress from triaxial tests was similar to that from the soil water retention curve. Therefore it is verified that a representative soil water retention curve can be defined which is independent of the confining effect under wetting or drying process of the hysteresis.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.679-686
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• 2010

Mechanical characteristics of bottom ash produced in coal-fired power plant are investigated to utilize as light-weight fill materials. Triaxial compression test, water retention test, and unsaturated direct shear test were conducted for weathered soil (WS), reclaimed bottom ash (RBA), and screened bottom ash (BA). RBA had larger frictional angle and lower effective cohesion than those of WS. Water retention charactersitics of RBA and BA existed within distributions of soil-water characteristic curves for domestic weathered soils. Unsaturated shear strength of RBA was similar to that of WS at matric suctions of 50 kPa and 100 kPa. As a conclusion, bottom ash can be used as fill materials to replace the conventional construction materials by.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.111-118
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• 2008

The purpose of this paper was to investigate the overburden effect on soil-water characteristic curve and unsaturated permeability of unsaturated weathered soils. For this, unsaturated suction and permeability tests under various overburden stress were conducted respectively. Then, the coefficient of unsaturated permeability and moisture capacity of weathered soils were estimated and compared. All these results are presented in the paper.

• Bulletin of the Korean Chemical Society
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• v.29 no.5
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• pp.979-984
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• 2008

In this study, 8 solutes (aniline, caffeine, p-cresol, ethyl benzene, methylparaben, phenol, pyridine, and toluene) have been tested in terms of linear solvation energy relationships (LSER). Several micellar liquid chromatography (MLC) systems using cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide (CTAB) and a mixture of water with (methanol, n-propanol, and n-butanol) modifiers were characterized using the LSER solvation parameter model. The effects of the surfactant and modifier concentration on the retention in MLC were discussed. LSER model had demonstrated high potential to predict retention factors with high squared correlation coefficients ($r^2$ > 0.99). A comparison of predicted and experimental retention factors suggests that LSER formalism is able to reproduce adequately the experimental retention factors of the solutes studied in the different experimental conditions investigated. This model is a helpful tool to understand the solute-surfactant interactions and evaluate the retention characteristic of micellar liquid chromatography.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.21-26
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• 2003

Hwang and Powers (2003) developed a simple model for estimating water retention characteristic (WRC) directly from particle-size distribution (PSD) data, by applying a lognormal distribution law to both PSD and pore-size distribution. The objective of this work was to determine if the performance of the model developed by Hwang and Powers (2003) would be affected by soil texture. The results of this research proved that the performance of the model was indeed affected by soil texture. In particular, its performance diminished with increases in the fine particle fractions. Also, the nonlinear model, which assumes a nonlinear relation between particle-size and pore-size, performed better than the linear model, regardless of soil texture classes.

• Journal of Korean Society of Water and Wastewater
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.581-587
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• 2014

Sediment basin that is typical facility installed for development business to prevent soil erosion has low removal efficiency and therefore, it causes complaints from the residents and has a bad effect on ecosystem. Thus there is a limit to control soil erosion using the existing design methods of sediment basin, so the purposes of this study is providing suitable design factors for sediment basin with regarding soil characteristic of development areas and analysing sedimentation characteristic by inflow concentration changes. The results, for analyzing the sedimentation characteristic by soil concentrations within approximately 2,000 ~ 20,000 mg/L of initial SS concentration, indicated similar sedimentation trends for same soil in the supernatant regardless of initial concentrations. However, for different soil characteristic (percent finer), there are different results in sedimentation rate and concentrations of the supernatant. Thus it is recommended that sediment basin to prevent soil erosion during construction should be designed based on retention time derived from soil sedimentation experiments regardless of inlet concentration. In addition, installing the soil erosion prevention facility at the back to satisfy effluent water quality should be considered to minimize soil erosion effectively.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.19 no.10
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• pp.21-26
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• 2018

Soil-water characteristic curve, which is called soil retention curve, is required to explore water flows in unsaturated soils, relative permeability of water in multi-phase fluids flow, and change to stiffness and volume of soils. Thus, the understanding of soil-water characteristic curves of soils help us explore the behavior of soils inclduing fluids. Biopolymers are environmental-friendly materials, which can be completely degraded by microbes and have been believed not to affect the nature. Thus, various biopolymers such as deacetylated power, polyethylene oxide, xanthan gum, alginic acid sodium salt, and polyacrylic acid have been studies for the application to soil remediation, soil improvement, and enhanced oil recovery. PAA (polyacrylic acid) is one of biopolymers, which have shown a great effect in enhanced oil recovery as well as soil remediation because of the improvement of water-flood performance by mobility control. The study on soil-water characteristic curves of sandy soils containing PAA (polyacrylic acid) has been conducted through experimentations and theoretical models. The results show that both capillary entry pressure and residual water saturation dramatically increase according to the increased concentration of PAA (polyacrylic acid). Also, soil-water characteristic curves by theoretical models are quite well consistent with the results by experimental studies. Thus, soil-water characteristic curves of sandy soils containing biopolymers such as PAA (polyacrylic acid) can be estimated using fitting parameters for the theoretical model.

• Journal of Nuclear Fuel Cycle and Waste Technology(JNFCWT)
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.329-338
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• 2019

Suction of unsaturated bentonite buffers is a very important input parameter for hydro-mechanical performance assessment and design of an engineered barrier system. This study analyzed suction measurement techniques and constitutive models of unsaturated porous media reported in the literature, and suggested suction measurement techniques and constitutive models suitable for bentonite buffer in an HLW repository. The literature review showed the suction of bentonite buffer to be much higher than that of soil, as measured by total suction including matric suction and osmotic suction. The measurement methods (RH-Cell, RH-Cell/Sensor) using a relative humidity sensor were suitable for suction measurement of the bentonite buffer; the RH-Cell /Sensor method was more preferred in consideration of the temperature change due to radioactive decay heat and measurement time. Various water retention models of bentonite buffers have been proposed through experiments, but the van Genuchten model is mainly used as a constitutive model of hydro-mechanical performance assessment of unsaturated buffers. The water characteristic curve of bentonite buffers showed different tendencies according to bentonite type, dry density, temperature, salinity, sample state and hysteresis. Selection of water retention models and determination of model input parameters should consider the effects of these controlling factors so as to improve overall reliability.