Study on Disintegration and Infiltration Characteristics of Nanjing Jiangxinzhou Embankment Soil

Flood season embankment due to long-term high water immersion environment creates situations where its soil properties will deteriorate, quickly triggering bank slope instability and other dangerous situations. In order to study embankment slope soil in the disintegration and permeability characteristics under the long-term water immersion process, disintegration tests and variable head infiltration tests were carried out on embankment-disturbed clays in Jiangxinzhou, Nanjing, Jiangsu Province, China. The results showed that the disintegration rate decreased with increasing dry density. Moreover, the samples gained weight quickly when the water content was low. Moreover, there is a threshold water content of around 20%, and it is assumed that the disintegration pattern of the soil may be significantly different depending on the optimum moisture content. The effect of moisture content on the disintegration of the samples was more significant. There were three main typical disintegration modes of the samples. The primary influencing factors resulting in the various disintegration patterns are the soil matrix suction, the change in consistency following water immersion, and the water membrane on the surface of the clay particles. The coefficient of permeability decreases with increasing dry density, and the variation of the coefficient of permeability with dry density coincides with the exponential function relationship. Long-term immersion conditions will change the permeability of the soil. An electron microscope test of immersed and unimmersed samples shows that the internal structure change is an essential factor affecting the permeability. After water immersion, with the dissolution of cementing material between soil particles, the particles move to fill the intergranular pore space so that the permeability coefficient decreases.