Comparative study of bubble point method and mercury intrusion porosimetry techniques for characterizing the pore-size distribution of geotextiles

Shobha K. Bhatia, Jennifer L. Smith

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

33 Scopus citations

Abstract

In this paper, two simple and rapid techniques for evaluating the pore-size distribution of geotextiles are compared: the bubble point method and mercury intrusion porosimetry. Both of these techniques have successfully been used to measure the pore-size distribution of various materials. These techniques, however, measure different and unique porometric characteristics of materials. The bubble point method measures through-flow pores while the mercury intrusion method measures the volume of pores. In this paper, test results of both bubble point and mercury intrusion methods for a wide variety of geotextiles are presented. In general, the mercury intrusion pore-size distributed results showed much larger pores in the geotextiles than did the bubble point method. Overall, the mercury intrusion method was unable to distinguish between geotextiles of different manufacturing processes and various thicknesses. The bubble point method, on the other hand, was able to distinguish between geotextiles of different manufacturing processes and of various thicknesses, as long as the cross-sections of the geotextiles varied.

Original languageEnglish (US)
Pages (from-to)679-702
Number of pages24
JournalGeotextiles and Geomembranes
Volume13
Issue number10
DOIs
StatePublished - 1994

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Geotechnical Engineering and Engineering Geology
  • General Materials Science
  • Civil and Structural Engineering

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