%0 Journal Article %A Rojas, Eduardo %A Perez-Rea, Maria de la Luz %A Gallegos, Gustavo %A Leal, Julio %D 2012 %I Begell House %K porous model, mercury intrusion porosimetry, soil-water characteristic curve %N 6 %P 517-530 %R 10.1615/JPorMedia.v15.i6.20 %T A POROUS MODEL FOR THE INTERPRETATION OF MERCURY POROSIMETRY TESTS %U https://www.dl.begellhouse.com/journals/49dcde6d4c0809db,0cf7f81259eccbc6,0d2ffe2e3eaa9ccb.html %V 15 %X Recently, the pore size distribution obtained from mercury intrusion porosimetry tests has been used by different researchers to describe some properties of soils. For example, porosimetry results have been used to obtain the soil-water characteristic curve and the hydraulic conductivity for different soils. One of the main assumptions of the mercury intrusion porosimetry test is to consider that the pores of soil can be represented by a bundle of capillary tubes, each of a different diameter, which saturate or dry independently from the others. However, this assumption is unrealistic. This article presents a more realistic porous model based on three different types of pores that allow for the simulation of the hysteresis of the soil-water characteristic curve as for the collapse of pores during drying. This model is a computational type, which means that the different elements are accommodated in two- or three-dimensional regular networks and the filling or drying of pores is followed step by step. The model is used to simulate a mercury intrusion porosimetry test in a material where the pore size distribution has also been obtained from image analysis of scanning electron micrographs. This simulation shows that the current interpretation for mercury intrusion porosimetry test results in pore sizes much smaller than the real values. %8 2012-05-14