Investigation of Soil Conditioning Tests with Three-Dimensional Numerical Modeling

Due to the diverse and complex structure of soil and the variety of foam-modifier materials that are used, it is difficult to provide a model to predict the laboratory behavior of modified soils. For example, several studies have shown independently that the amount of the foam-modified soil depends on several factors, such as the internal friction angle and normal stiffness. Of late, modeling by numerical methods has become popular in engineering sciences and the modeling of complex material behavior is possible with the help of numerical methods. In this research, the performance and efficiency of the numerical method in the modeling of laboratory tests such as the slump test and the uniaxial compressive strength test were investigated and it was found that numerical modeling performs very well in predicting the results of these tests for foam-modified sand samples. In order to achieve this goal, the slump test and the uniaxial compressive strength test were performed in the laboratory on several modified sand samples in order to obtain the laboratory results for these samples. Then, numerical simulation of these experiments was carried out using PFC software. The results of numerical modeling were compared with the experimental results, and good agreement was observed. Finally, after calibration of the numerical model using the experimental results, the effect of changes in the internal friction angle and the normal stiffness of the modified sand in the amount of the slump was investigated. According to the results of this sensitivity analysis, it was determined that by increasing both effective parameters the amount of the slump of foam-modified sand decreases and that the parameters are the most important factors in controlling the slump value.