Development of mathematical models to determine the effect of wet and drying cycles on physical-mechanical parameters of fine-grained soils

Due to the vulnerable nature of earthen dams , all factors affecting the stability of these dams should be studied. Consecutive wetting and drying of the earthen dam core is one of the important factors that can affect the physical and mechanical parameters of the dam core. These changes increase the subsequent risks such as leakage, piping and subsidence. This is especially happen in arid and semi-arid regions such as Iran. Various researches have been done in this field and some of these researches have provided suitable mathematical models for their data, but because the results of each research related to the studied soil are specific to the same study, these models can be unusable for other data. In the present study, after collecting 866 laboratory data from 23 researches, the effect of wetting and successive drying of clay dam cores on physical-mechanical parameters was investigated and multivariate mathematical relationships between physical-mechanical parameters and number of wetting and drying were investigated. This study showed that the effect of wetting and drying on mechanical parameters is very important and should be considered in the analysis of embankment dam structures.