Evaluation of permeability of saturated clays based on their physical properties

Abstract

This article presents the findings of a study that comprised laboratory investigations of hydraulic permeability of clays, comparison of measured coefficients of hydraulic permeability with the predicted coefficients obtained according to procedures proposed by different researchers, and the analysis of the influence of individual physical properties of researched materials on their hydraulic permeability. The results showed that the existing expressions for predicting hydraulic permeability of clays cannot be generally applied because they do not yield satisfactory results. Therefore, a new empirical expression for predicting this characteristic is proposed based on the finding that measured coefficients of hydraulic permeability basically depend on porosity and the size of clay grains.