Soil stabilization properties of flexible intruders
Name
813315689-MIT.pdf
Description
Full printable version
Size
1.01 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
f3cc75b46e2bd49617ecb4a4ba4f0bb5
Author(s)
Luginbuhl, Katharine
Advisor(s)
Anette E. Hosoi.
Date Issued
2012
Publisher
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Abstract
In many locations, soil is held in place by the roots of plants. When these plants are removed or die, the soil loses its cohesive strength and erodes away. We seek to create artificial soil stabilizers that use the same physical principles as the plant roots. To investigate how flexible materials can stabilize soil, we use photoelastic particles to analyze the forces within a system when a flexible intruder is introduced to the system. We report on the increase in system forces as an effect of the flexible intruder and compare it to experiments with plant roots. Since soil is a granular material, using this method to increase the forces within patches of soil may help prevent erosion or landslides.
Description
Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2012.
Cataloged from PDF version of thesis.
Includes bibliographical references (p. 18).
Subjects
Mechanical Engineering.
MIT Department
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering
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