Using pore size distribution and porosity to estimate particle size distribution by nuclear magnetic resonance
Shangxin Feng, Zengguang Xu, Junrui Chai, Yanlong Li
Abstract
Soil particle size distribution (PSD) is critical for assessing the potential for internal instability of sand–gravel soils, mainly because particle migration in sand–gravel soils owing to seepage forces affects almost all soil hydraulic properties during internal erosion processes. Therefore, a reliable PSD analysis is essential for revealing the mechanism of particle migration and internal instability of sand–gravel soils. At present, however, PSD is commonly calculated by manual interpretation methods and cannot be continuously and nondestructively analyzed during internal erosion processes. Those methods are lacking, however, in that it results in a failure to continuously determine the internal erosion condition. In this paper, a new approach with the ability to continuously predict the PSD changes in sand–gravel mixtures is introduced based on one-dimensional laboratory suffusion tests in a non-destructive nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) system over a range of suffusion times. The results show that pore expansion and particle migration are an interactive process that controls suffusion development in sand–gravel mixtures. The proposed method is verified through experimental data measured by sieve analysis, and has potential to retrieve PSD information at different suffusion times.