Modeling the internal erosion behavior of lignosulfonate treated soil

This paper presents the development of an analytical model to predict the erosion rate of stabilised soil based on the law of conservation of energy. The model incorporates the strain energy intensity until failure, obtained from the stress-strain curves of lignosulfonate treated soil, to account for the stabilisation. The novel approach of this model is to correlate the shear strength characteristics with the erosion resistance. The proposed equation was used to predict the erosion rates of a non-plastic silty sand treated with lignosulfonate. The erosion resistance was interpreted in terms of the coefficient of soil erosion and the critical shear stress initiating erosion. It was observed that with the increasing amount of lignosulfonate, the critical shear stress increases and the coefficient of soil erosion decreases. The proposed model predicts the erosion resistant behaviour of lignosulfonate treated soil similar to the laboratory experiments.