Mechanical behaviour of variably saturated clay fills

Mechanical behaviour of variably saturated clay fills VLADISLAVA KOSTKANOVÁ Ph.D. Thesis - English Abstract The excavated overburden from open-cast coal mines is end-dumped in fills. Clay type soil prevails among the filled soils in North-western Bohemia. As a consequence of the character and state of the soil, together with the mining and dumping technology, a typical lumpy structure of the clay fill is formed. The filled lumps range in size and vary in mechanical properties, but stiff to solid lumps up to 0.5 m in size are prevalent. Large and open macrovoids between the single lumps are a characteristic feature of the clay fills. Clay fills exhibit a double porosity structure, consisting of intergranular porosity between the lumps and intragranular porosity inside them. The total porosity of the freshly filled soils can reach 70%. This type of clay fill structure is metastable. This thesis focuses on the problematic behaviour of clay fill soils due to their metastable structure and their partly saturated state. Long-term monitoring of matric suction at depths up to 2 metres in two reclaimed clay fills revealed two different trends. Seasonally-dependent suction oscillations were recorded in the moderate slope of the clay fill in the Bílina mine, while no suction pointing to fully saturated conditions was..