A Framework for Unifying Soil Fabric, Suction, Void Ratio, and Water Content during the Dehydration Process

In the process of soil dehydration, the soil fabric, water content, and void ratio vary with soil suction. They all can be regarded as variables depending on soil suction and soil history. At a particular state, the soil fabric, which can be characterized by a pore size distribution, inherently determines the water content and the void ratio. In this study, the monotonic drying process of soil was analyzed under an integrated framework of soil fabric, suction, void ratio, and water content. Under this framework, the drying process of slurry samples and overconsolidated samples were distinguished and investigated separately, including their drying mechanisms and the variations of soil fabric, soil shrinkage curve, and soil water characteristic curve. From the theoretical analysis, in a monotonic drying process, the envelope of the cumulative pore volume curves was found to be the soil-water characteristic curve and the shrinkage curve was found to be located in a narrow range that can be determined using the cumulative pore volume curve. These findings were further verified by the laboratory test data on a clay with sand.