Relationship Between Erodibility and Properties of Soils

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop equations correlating the erosion resistance of a soil to its geotechnical properties. Existing erosion tests and erosion correlations are documented. Around 200 erosion tests, and more than 200 geotechnical index property tests were conducted at Texas A&M University. A spreadsheet called TAMU-Erosion was developed. It consists of nearly 1000 erosion test results along with the major geotechnical properties including the 200 tests performed at Texas A&M University and many other tests collected from world-wide sources. The erosion tests’ raw data are embedded in TAMU-Erosion, along with an inquiry operation manual which allows the user to search the database in TAMU-Erosion. Numerical simulations were performed to compare different erosion tests. The erosion chart is populated with the Unified Soil Classification System (USCS) categories based on all the tests performed and collected; this chart helps to obtain the basic erosion parameters. Two statistical approaches were implemented to generate the best fit models linking the erodibility parameters to the geotechnical properties. These approaches were the deterministic frequentists’ regression, and the probabilistic Bayesian inference. This study aimed at finding a balance between the accuracy required for highway projects and the simplicity of the recommended models.