TY - GEN
T1 - Influence of biochar obtained from invasive weed on infiltration rate and cracking of soils
T2 - 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics, ICEG 2018
AU - Gopal, Phani
AU - Ratnam, Raval
AU - Farooq, Muhammad
AU - Garg, Ankit
AU - Gogoi, Nirmali
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© Springer Nature Singapore Pte Ltd. 2019.
PY - 2019
Y1 - 2019
N2 - Amendment of biochar (BC) in soil is an efficient and popular way to enhance agricultural productivity. In recent times, BC obtained from the by-products or wastes is gaining recognition in various engineering applications. Water hyacinth (WH), which is a highly invasive weed, can be turned into biochar for its productive usage. Recent studies investigated WH BC composite’s cracking potential, water retention capacity and agricultural productivity but did not focus much on its infiltration characteristics. The objective of this study is to investigate dependence of infiltration rate on crack intensity factor (CIF), suction and volumetric water content (VWC). The experiments were performed on the samples of bare soil, 5% and 10% BC (by weight) composites for 63 days (9 drying-wetting cycles) in natural conditions. The experimental data was used to train artificial neural networks (ANN). An ANN model was developed to predict the infiltration rate for each soil composition. Infiltration rate was relatively lower in case of 10% WH BC soil composite. CIF played a major role in governing the infiltration rate for bare soil but its significance relatively reduced as the BC content increased. BC content increases the relative importance of VWC in prediction of infiltration rate. Suction’s role in predicting infiltration rate, for both bare soil and BC composites was more or less the same. For applications (such as slopes or landfill cover) desiring less infiltration rate with a constraint of practically non-varying moisture content, 10% WH BC composite was found to be an ideal choice.
AB - Amendment of biochar (BC) in soil is an efficient and popular way to enhance agricultural productivity. In recent times, BC obtained from the by-products or wastes is gaining recognition in various engineering applications. Water hyacinth (WH), which is a highly invasive weed, can be turned into biochar for its productive usage. Recent studies investigated WH BC composite’s cracking potential, water retention capacity and agricultural productivity but did not focus much on its infiltration characteristics. The objective of this study is to investigate dependence of infiltration rate on crack intensity factor (CIF), suction and volumetric water content (VWC). The experiments were performed on the samples of bare soil, 5% and 10% BC (by weight) composites for 63 days (9 drying-wetting cycles) in natural conditions. The experimental data was used to train artificial neural networks (ANN). An ANN model was developed to predict the infiltration rate for each soil composition. Infiltration rate was relatively lower in case of 10% WH BC soil composite. CIF played a major role in governing the infiltration rate for bare soil but its significance relatively reduced as the BC content increased. BC content increases the relative importance of VWC in prediction of infiltration rate. Suction’s role in predicting infiltration rate, for both bare soil and BC composites was more or less the same. For applications (such as slopes or landfill cover) desiring less infiltration rate with a constraint of practically non-varying moisture content, 10% WH BC composite was found to be an ideal choice.
KW - ANN
KW - Biochar
KW - Infiltration
KW - Interactive effects
KW - Natural field work
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85057177818&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/citedby.url?scp=85057177818&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1007/978-981-13-2221-1_35
DO - 10.1007/978-981-13-2221-1_35
M3 - Conference contribution
AN - SCOPUS:85057177818
SN - 9789811322204
T3 - Environmental Science and Engineering
SP - 351
EP - 358
BT - Proceedings of the 8th International Congress on Environmental Geotechnics Volume 1 - Towards a Sustainable Geoenvironment
A2 - Bouazza, Abdelmalek
A2 - Zhan, Liangtong
A2 - Chen, Yunmin
PB - Springer Berlin Heidelberg
Y2 - 28 October 2018 through 1 November 2018
ER -