Environmentally Friendly Transparent Soil

Much of the work performed in geotechnical engineering cannot be directly observed and measured as everything beneath the Earth's surface is unobservable. Transparent soil modeling, a non-intrusive optical visualization technique, has been introduced to visualize the soil behavior. Limitations are found in using transparent soils developed, such as non-environmentally friendly, corrosive to latex membranes of geotechnical apparatus and hazardous to human health. Hence, safe, colorless, stable and odorless sugar solution (pore fluid) was selected, together with fused quartz (granular material), to develop transparent soil of environmentally friendly, compatible to geotechnical apparatus, safe to human health and feasible in geotechnical engineering modeling. To demonstrate the feasibility of this transparent soil, compaction grouting and pile installation processes were modeled. Based on the preliminary results, the environmentally friendly transparent soil developed was applicable to geotechnical engineering modeling to visualize the soil behavior from a different perspective.