Thermo-hydro-mechanical effects of climate change on geotechnical infrastructure

• Main Author: Robinson, Joe Dylan
• Other Authors: George L. Mason
• Format: Others
• Language: en
• Published: MSSTATE 2016
• Subjects: Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Online Access: http://sun.library.msstate.edu/ETD-db/theses/available/etd-11242015-153904/

<p>The main goal of this research is to quantitatively assess the resilience and vulnerability of geotechnical infrastructure to extreme events under a changing climate. In the first part, pertinent facts and statistics regarding Californias extreme drought and current status of its levees are presented. Weakening processes such as soil strength reduction, soil desiccation cracking, land subsidence and surface erosion, and oxidation of soil organic carbon are comprehensively evaluated to illustrate the devastating impacts that the California drought can have on earthen structures. In the second part, rainfall-triggered slope instabilities are analyzed using extreme precipitation estimates, derived using the historical stationary and a proposed future nonstationary approach. The extremes are integrated into a series of fully coupled 2D finite element simulations. The final part of this study investigates the impact of simultaneous variations in soil moisture and temperature changes in the California region on soil strength through a proposed thermo-hydro-mechanical framework. </p>