Laboratory Verification of a Proposed New Method to Determine the In-Situ Effective Porosity of Unsaturated Soil

A laboratory validation of a proposed new method of determining the in-situ effective porosity of unsaturated soils was carried out on unsaturated river sand. The proposed method consists of boring a small diameter hole into the soil and inserting an Amplitude Domain Reflectometry (ADR) probe at the bottom part of the hole. Water is supplied into the hole till saturation and later de-saturated. The water content with time is determined from the ADR probe voltage potential readings. The effective porosity is determined from the difference between the saturated and de-saturated water contents. However, in the laboratory, the water is supplied through the top and bottom parts of the sample. From the experiments the obtained effective porosity ranged from 0.28 to 0.29 for wetting from the top with an average of 0.287 and 0.29 to 0.30 for wetting from the bottom with an average of 0.293. The determined effective porosity ranged from 71.7-73.3% of the real initial porosity of 0.40 of the river sand. The maximum attained degree of saturation during the experiment was 91%. The results indicated that the method will be suitable and useful in determining the effective porosity of medium grained unsaturated soils.