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A relation of hydraulic conductivity – Void ratio

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Article in Engineering Geology · August 2016

DOI: 10.1016/j.enggeo.2016.08.017

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 Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Engineering Geology

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/enggeo

A relation of hydraulic conductivity — void ratio for soils based on

Kozeny-Carman equation
Xingwei Ren, Yang Zhao, Qinglu Deng ⁎, Jianyu Kang, Dexian Li, Debin Wang
Faculty of Engineering, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The relationship between hydraulic conductivity and void ratio is briefly reviewed. The classical Kozeny-Carman
Received 10 January 2016 equation is known for its capacity to describe hydraulic conductivity of sandy soils, but unsuccessful applicability
Received in revised form 28 August 2016 in clayey soils. To solve this problem, the concept of effective void ratio is introduced to derive a new hydraulic
Accepted 30 August 2016
conductivity-void ratio relationship based on the Poiseuille's law. The proposed equation is evaluated by using
Available online 31 August 2016
experimental data from existing literature, and proved to have a satisfied capability to predict hydraulic conduc-
Keywords:
tivity for a wide range of soils, from the coarse-grained to the fine-grained. This paper presents a theoretical ex-
Hydraulic conductivity planation for the failed applicability of the Kozeny-Carman equation in clayey soils: the existence of the voids that
Kozeny-Carman relation contain immobile water have no contribution to flow but have the same contribution to the total void ratio (used
Effective void ratio in the KC equation to predict hydraulic conductivity) as the voids with mobile water.
Soils © 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
Specific surface area

1. Introduction
Hydraulic conductivity is one of the most important and useful pa-
rameters in the study of percolation process in porous media (Bear,
1988), water regime in stratified deposits (Tavenas et al., 1983), consol-
idation and settlement of soils and foundations (Samarasinghe et al.,
1982; Rodriguez et al., 2004), migration of gas and hydrate (Xu et al.,
2015; Dai and Seol, 2014), storage of CO2 and nuclear waste (Oostrom
et al., 2016; Ye et al., 2012; Mejias et al., 2009; Vilarrasa et al., 2015), mi-
gration of pollutants from waste disposal facilities (Malusis et al., 2003;
Villar et al., 2005), and other geological and geotechnical engineering
problems. Unfortunately, it is difficult to measure and can be highly var-
iable because of its complexity and influencing factors (Dolinar, 2009).
A long-standing problem for geotechnical researchers and engineers
is to predict the hydraulic conductivity of soils accurately and reliably.
Laboratory studies have shown that hydraulic conductivity depends
on a long list of parameters: porosity, saturation, clay content, fluid
type, pore pressure, and pore geometry, which include pore size distri-
bution, tortuosity, pore throats, coordination number of pore, and so on
(Lambe and Whitman, 1969; Bear, 1988; Hilfer, 1991; Fauzi, 2002a;
Costa, 2006; Jang et al., 2011). In spite of the complexity, numerous re-
searchers have suggested expressions for the essential behavior of hy-
draulic conductivity of soils (Kozeny, 1927; Carman, 1937; Taylor,
1948; Mesri and Olson, 1971; Samarasinghe et al., 1982; Hilfer, 1992;
Saar and Manga, 1999; Fauzi, 2002b; Rodriguez et al., 2004;
Mortensen et al., 2005; Roque and Didier, 2006; Chai et al., 2011;
⁎ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: 443293929@qq.com (Q. Deng).
Chapuis, 2012; Sante et al., 2015). The equation currently used most
often is the Kozeny-Carman relation, proposed by Kozeny (Kozeny,
1927) and improved by Carman (Carman, 1937).
1 γw e3
k ¼ CF ð1Þ
S2s μρ2m 1 þ e
where k is the hydraulic conductivity, (m/s), and e is void ratio of soils,
which is dimensionless; CF is a dimensionless shape constant, with a
value about CF ≈ 0.2 (Taylor, 1948); Ss is the specific surface area of par-
ticles (m2/g); γw = unit weight of fluid (N/m3); ρm (kg/m3) is particle
density of soil; μ (N∙s/m2) is fluid viscosity.
The Kozeny-Carman equation was derived using assumptions of
flow through the uniform tubes of a cross section, and has been exper-
imentally verified for coarse-grained soils such as sands (Taylor, 1948;
Carman, 1956; Lambe and Whitman, 1969). But since the equation as-
sumes there are no electrochemical reactions between the solid parti-
cles and the permeant, it is not appropriate for clayey soils (Carrier III,
3
e
2003). Eq. 1 indicates that a plot of k versus 1þe should be a straight
line passing through the origin. However, experimental results do not
always support such a linear relationship in clayey soils (Taylor, 1948;
Michaels and Lin, 1954; Raymond, 1966; Mesri and Olson, 1971;
Samarasinghe et al., 1982; Tavenas et al., 1983; Siddique and Safiullah,
1995; Horpibulsuk et al., 2011).
Many researchers have suggested possible relationships between
hydraulic conductivity and void ratio for fine-grained soils. Taylor
(1948) and Lambe and Whitman (1969) suggested that a linear relation
existed between the logarithm of hydraulic conductivity and the void

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.enggeo.2016.08.017
0013-7952/© 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
90 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97
ratio for clays.
k Vs
e ¼ e0 þ ck log
k0
where ck is the permeability change index, i.e., the slope of e versus log k
plot; k0 is the hydraulic conductivity for a reference void ratio e0. This
relation is generally valid for a range of void ratio e ≤ 2.5 (Tavenas
et al., 1983; Siddique and Safiullah, 1995).
Samarasinghe et al. (1982) proposed a fully empirical KC-like equa-
tion by substituting the void ratio exponent 3 by n,
en
k¼C
1þe
where C is a constant with the same unit as k; and the exponent n is a
constant that depends on the type of soil, and ranges from 3.2 to 14.2.
Eq. (3) can be rewritten as follows:
log½kð1 þ eÞ ¼ n loge þ logC
Samarasinghe et al. (1982) made a comparison of log[k(1+ e)]~log e
with e ~ log k using some test data of clays, and results showed that
Eq. (4) had a better performance than Eq. (2). However, this modifica-
tion of replacing e3/(1+ e) with en/(1 + e) is arbitrary and lacks theoret-
ical basis. In addition, another shortcoming of Eq. (3) and (4) is the
parameter of n having no clear physical meaning.
Taylor (1948) suggested that the water bound to both the surface of
all particles and between parallel, plate-shaped soil particles should be
responsible for the failure of Eq. (1) to predict hydraulic conductivity
for clays. The equation could be corrected by using a new concept for
the void ratio, which is the ratio of volume of free water to the particles
(Taylor, 1948). In this paper, a new concept named effective void ratio is
introduced to adapt the Kozeny-Carman relation for clayey soils.
Our objective here is to present a theoretical explanation to elucidate
the failure of Kozeny-Carman equation to predict hydraulic conductivity
for clayey soils, and to propose a capable predictive equation for a wide
range of soils. It is helpful to develop a new insight to understand the
hydraulic conductivity of fine-grained soils.
2. Theoretical method
Because of the existence of “relatively small pores” and “dead-end
pores” as well as the effect of clay surfaces and interlayers, not all of
water stored in fine-grained materials participates in flow. The water
that does not circulate is defined as immobile water. Consequently,
the seepage only occurs through a part of the pore space in clayey
soils. Thus, the prerequisite for the application of the Kozeny-Carman
relation to fine-grained soils is to find a certain method to describe ef-
fective pores. In this paper, the effective void ratio is used to accomplish
this goal.
2.1. Definition of effective void ratio
For a saturated soil, effective porosity φe is defined as the ratio of the
fraction of the pore volume where the water can circulate (the volume
of mobile water) to the total volume of a representative sample of the
medium (see also Ahuja et al., 1984; Koponen et al., 1997: Yokoyama
and Takeuchi, 2009; Nishiyama and Yokoyama, 2014). Similarly, the ef-
fective void ratio ee and ineffective void ratio ei are the ratio of mobile
water volume and immobile water volume to the volume of the solid,
respectively.
V mw V mw V mw
φe ¼ ¼ ¼
Vt V s þ V w V s þ V mw þ V iw
V mw
ee ¼ ð6Þ
ð2Þ
V iw
ei ¼ ð7Þ
Vs
where, Vmw is the volume of mobile water; Viw is the volume of immo-
bile water; Vs is the volume of the solid phase; Vw is the volume of
water, Vw = Vmw + Viw; Vtis the total volume, Vt = Vs + Vw =
Vs + Vmw + Viw.
The relationship of φe versus ee and ee versus et can therefore be writ-
ten as:
ð3Þ ee
ϕe ¼ ð8Þ
et þ 1
ee ¼ et −ei ð9Þ
From the definition of ei, it can be seen that ei is governed by the
ð4Þ magnitude of immobile water. The immobile water mainly consists of
(1) the adhesive water on mineral surfaces, (2) the absorbed water in
the clay interlayer, (3) the water contained in unconnected and dead-
end pores. Consequently, it depends on a number of factors of
physical-geometrical characteristics and chemical properties of porous
media. Among these factors, three of them are predominant: geometric
characteristics of the pores and particles, salinity of the flow and cation
exchange of clay minerals. The three factors can be represented by sev-
eral critical parameters, i.e., the specific surface area of particles Ss and
total void ratio et, the salinity factor Sf and the cation exchange capacity
Qv (Hill et al., 1979). For a given porous media system, since Ss, Sf and Qv
keep constant during consolidation and et changes, it may exist a rela-
tionship between ei and et which can be used to predict ei.
In addition to the immobile water, the ineffective void ratio is also
probably affected by preferential flow paths made of larger voids.
Some studies show that fluid presents preference to percolate, and
may flow only through the macro-porosity (Wang et al., 2013;
Vilarrasa et al., 2015; Sánchez et al., 2012). Jang et al. (2011) investigat-
ed the effect of pore-scale variability on hydraulic conductivity using
network models, and concluded that “as few as 10 percent of pores
may be responsible for 50 percent of the total flow in media with high
pore-size variability”. Therefore, the relatively smaller voids (micro
voids) have less even no contribution to flow than the larger ones
(macro voids), while they have the same contribution to the void ratio.
Following the above analysis, for a given saturated soil with a con-
stant total volume Vt, both the Viw and the Vmw will increase with the
total porosity ϕt increasing, but the Vmw will increase at a greater rate
than the Viw. The relationship between them can be described as
Mobile water
Rs
Rs
Soil particle
Immobile water Immobile water
ð5Þ
Fig. 1. Assumption of the distribution of the immobile pore water.
 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97 91

1.0 1.0

0<m<1

0.8 m=1 0.8

m>1
0.6 0.6

Vmw/Vw
Viw/Vw

0.4 0.4

m>1

0.2
m=1 0.2

0<m<1

0.0 0.0
0.0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1.0
Vw/Vt

Fig. 2. Plot of Viw/Vw ~Vw/Vt (dotted line) and Vmw/Vw ~Vw/Vt (solid line) with different m.

follows: the ineffective void ratio ei, the effective void ratio ee and porosity ϕt
are shown in in Fig. 3. Both the ineffective void ratio and effective void
V iw ratio increase with porosity, but the effective void ratio increases
¼ aϕm
t þb ð10Þ
Vw much faster than the ineffective void ratio.
Two boundary conditions are used to solve a and b, as shown in
where a and b are parameters, and are calculated using boundary condi- Fig. 4.
tions; m is a positive constant for a given soil.

The smaller the ϕt, the closer the volume of the immobile water Viw 1 ¼ a  0m þ b ϕt →0; V iw =V w →1
ð11Þ
to the volume of total water Vw, as shown in Fig. 2. The relationship of 0 ¼ a  1m þ b ϕt →1; V iw =V w →0

2.5 20
(a) (b)
2
Ineffective void ratio

Effective void ratio

15

1.5
10
1

5
0.5

0 0
0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Porosity Porosity
Ratio of Ineffective and effective void ratio

2.5 2000
(c) (d)
Ineffective void ratio

2
1500

1.5
1000
1

500
0.5

0 0
0 5 10 15 0 0.2 0.4 0.6 0.8 1
Effective void ratio Porosity

Fig. 3. Relationship between ineffective and effective void ratio as well as porosity (m = 2.5).
92 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97

Porosity increasing

Vw / Vt =φt = 0 0 < φt < 1 Vw / Vt = φ t= 1

Fig. 4. Schematic diagram of increasing porosity.

The parameters a and b are solved by Equation (11): a = − 1 , b =1. 2.2. Modified Kozeny-Carman relation with effective void ratio
Since Viw/Vw = ei/et, the Eq. (10) is reformulated as:
According to Taylor (1948), the flow through tubes of varying cross
8  m sections is given by:
>
> et
< ei ¼ et −et
 1þm et
ð12Þ 1 γw RH 2
>
> et Q¼ iAw ð13Þ
: ee ¼ et CF μ
1 þ et

In which, RH is hydraulic radius, which is defined as the ratio of the

These definitions are linked to the concept of pore fluid displace-
ment rather than to the percentage of the volume occupied by pore
spaces. The pore volume occupied by mobile water is smaller than the
total pore space. Consequently, the effective porosity and the effective
void ratio are always equal to or smaller than the total porosity and
total void ratio.
area of cross section available for flow to the wetted perimeter, and
originally presented by Kozeny (Kozeny, 1927; Taylor, 1948); i is
Darcy's gradient; Aw is the area of the wetted tube; other parameters
are the same as in Eq. (1). We assume that different shapes of tubes
have the same length. In this case, for porosity, the relationship between
volumes is equivalent to the relationship between areas. Consequently,

1E+0
Sandy soils
1E-1
Silty soils
1E-2 Clayey soils

1E-3

1E-4
Predicted k (cm/s)

1E-5

1E-6

1E-7

1E-8

1E-9

1E-10

1E-11

1E-12
1E-12 1E-11 1E-10 1E-9 1E-8 1E-7 1E-6 1E-5 1E-4 1E-3 1E-2 1E-1 1E+0
Measured k (cm/s)

Fig. 5. The measured hydraulic conductivity k versus the predicted k by Eq. (25) with two fitted parameter C and m. Data source: Mesri and Olson, 1971; Horpibulsuk et al., 2011; Michaels
and Lin, 1954; Raymond, 1966; Siddique and Safiullah, 1995; Tavenas et al., 1983; Terzaghi et al., 1996; Deng et al., 2010; Dolinar, 2009; Kwon et al., 2011; Kim et al., 2013; Sridharan and
Nagara, 2005; Bandini and Sathiskumar, 2009; Sivapullaiah et al., 2000; Chu et al., 1954; Phadnis and Santamarina, 2011; Kaniraj and Gayathri, 2004; Taylor, 1948; Chapuis et al., 1989;
Lambe and Whitman, 1969.
 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97 93

if the total area of the cross section including the tube walls is designat- of the flow channels. Thus,
ed At and the effective porosity is designated φe, then the area of the
wetted tube Aw can be expressed as follows: Af Af L Vf
RH ¼ ¼ ¼ ð17Þ
P wp P wp L Asf
ee
Aw ¼ ϕe At ¼ At ð14Þ
et þ 1
where Af = the cross section available for flow; Pwp = the wetted pe-
rimeter; L = the length of tube; Vf = the volume of flow channels;
Eq. (13) can be rewritten: Asf = the total surface area of flow channels.
! Assume the saturated porous media which flow passes through con-
1 γ w RH 2 ee sists of uniform spherical particles with a radius of Rs, and all the immo-
Q¼ iAt ð15Þ
C F μ et þ 1 bile water is distributed evenly surrounding the spherical particle
forming a concentric sphere with a bigger radius of R′,s as shown in Fig. 1.
The volume of the newly-formed sphere is the sum of the volume of
Thus, taking into account Darcy's law, the hydraulic conductivity k soil grains and the immobile pore water,
can be expressed as:
4 4
πRs 3 ð1 þ ei Þ ¼ πR0s
3
1 γw RH 2 ee V s þ V iw ¼ V s þ ei V s ¼ V s ð1 þ ei Þ ¼ ð18Þ
k¼ ð16Þ 3 3
C F μ et þ 1
The R′s can be computed as
For completely saturated soil, the hydraulic radius RH can also be de-
fined as the ratio of the volume of the flow channels to the surface area R0s ¼ Rs ð1 þ ei Þ1=3 ð19Þ

1.E-06
Eq.1 —— ARE=4.07, SDR=0.22
1.E-07 Eq.2 —— ARE=1.42, SDR=4.40
Eq.3 —— ARE=0.32, SDR=0.26
Hydraulic conductivity (cm/s)

Eq.25—— ARE=0.56, SDR=0.56

1.E-08

1.E-09

1.E-10

1.E-11

1.E-12
(a) smectite
1.E-13
1 10 100
Total void ratio

0.07
Eq.1 —— ARE=0.066, SDR=0.167
Eq.2 —— ARE=0.069, SDR=0.211
0.06
Eq.3 —— ARE=0.067, SDR=0.166
Hydraulic conductivity (cm/s)

Eq.25—— ARE=0.066, SDR=0.167

0.05

0.04

0.03

0.02

(b) beach sand

0.01
0.6 0.65 0.7 0.75 0.8 0.85 0.9 0.95 1
Total void ratio

Fig. 6. Comparison of different k ~ et model. The experimental data of smectite in (a) was measured by Mesri and Olson (1971), and the beach sand in (b) by Taylor (1948).
94 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97

The surface area of flow channels Asf can be expressed as follows:
2
Asf ¼ 4πR0s ¼ 4πRs 2 ð1 þ ei Þ2=3 ¼ As ð1 þ ei Þ2=3
Since the immobile water is assumed to be evenly distributed on the
internal surface of tube (namely external surface of soil particle), it is
equivalently considered as a portion of tube wall. Thus, the volume of
flow channel Vf (the effective pore volume with mobile water) can be
expressed by effective void ratio ee and the soil particle volume Vs:
Carman Eq. (1) and Eq. (2), and almost as good as the fully empirical
Eq. (3). For coarse-grained material beach sand, Eq. (25) successfully
ð20Þ reproduced experimental data, and even gave a lower average relative
error than Eq. (3) The results indicate that unlike the Kozeny-Carman
equation, the proposed equation is able to predict hydraulic conductiv-
ity for fine grained soils.
4. Discussion

V f ¼ ee V s ð21Þ 4.1. The exponent m and parameter C in Eq. (25)

Substituting Eqs. (20) and (21) into Eq. (17), yields In order to make the proposed Eq. (25) easy to use, we sought to find
expressions for the two parameters in the equation as a function of
ee 1 readily measurable soil parameters. Dolinar (2009) investigated the hy-
RH ¼ ð22Þ
ð1 þ ei Þ 2=3 Ss ρm draulic conductivity k and the void ratio e by use of a power equation of
the form: k = αeβ, and found the α and β in the power equation were
Combining Eqs. (22) and (9), the Eq. (16) can be modified as soil-dependent parameters: a good correlation between the two param-
follows: eters and specific surface area as well as Atterberg limits. Following
these observations, we studied the correlation between the parameters
1 γw 1 ðet −ei Þ3 m and C in the Eq. (25) and the specific surface area. Fitted parameters
k¼ ð23Þ are plotted in Fig. 7. The specific surface area was not directly reported
C F μρ2m Ss 2 ð1 þ et Þð1 þ ei Þ4=3
in some sources, which was estimated by some correlations: Ss =
1.8LL − 34 for fine-grained soils, and Ss = 3(Cu + 7)/4(ρwGsD50) for
The Eq. (23) cannot be used directly to predict hydraulic conductiv-
ity because the ineffective void ratio ei is difficult to be given.
Substituting the Eq. (12) into the Eq. (23), yields
4
Sandy soils
1 γw 1 et 3mþ3
k¼ h i43 ð24Þ Silty soils
C F μρ2m Ss 2 5
ð1 þ et Þ3mþ1 ð1 þ et Þmþ1 −emþ1
t 3
Clayey soils

Clayey soils:
Parameterm (cm/s)

When m= 0, the Eq. (24) goes back to the Kozeny-Carman Eq. (1). It m=1.5 ± 0.5
indicates that the Kozeny-Carman equation is a special case of the pro- 2
posed equation. Silty soils:
Eq. (24) can be also expressed as: m=1.0 ± 0.2
1
et 3mþ3
k¼C h i43 ð25Þ
5
ð1 þ et Þ3mþ1 ð1 þ et Þmþ1 −emþ1
t
0
Sandy soils:
1 γw 1
where, C ¼ C F μρ2m Ss 2 . m=0+0.1
(a)
-1
3. Evaluation and applications 1E-4 1E-3 1E-2 1E-1 1E+0 1E+1 1E+2 1E+3
Specific surface Ss (m2/g)
More than 1100 data points of hydraulic conductivity (k) and void
ratio (e) from existing literatures are compiled to examine performance 1E+1
Sandy soils
of the proposed Eq. (25). All of the used data were obtained by labora- 1E+0 Silty soils
tory experiments, and involved a wide range of soils, from coarse- 1E-1 Clayey soils
grained soils to fine-grained ones. The information of these data includ- Best fitted line
ing soil type, specific gravity, liquid limit and test method were summa- 1E-2
Parameter C (cm/s)

rized in Appendix Table 1. The Least Squares Method was used to obtain 1E-3
the parameters C and m in the Eq. (25) by fitting the data set of k and e. 1E-4
With the fitted C and m, hydraulic conductivity was computed by the
1E-5
proposed Eq. (25), and made a comparison with the tested values as
shown in Fig. 5. It can be seen that most of the computed k-values are 1E-6 Best fitted line
located in the range between 1/3 and 3 times the tested k-values. This 1E-7
is within the expected margin of variation for laboratory permeability
1E-8
test results. It indicates that the proposed theoretical Eq. (25) is valid R2=0.9360
for predicting hydraulic conductivity both for coarse- and fine-grained 1E-9
soils. 1E-10
Furthermore, the relationship (25) was compared with Kozeny-
(b)
1E-11
Carman Eqs. (1), (2), and (3) directly on the data of smectite by Mesri 1E-4 1E-3 1E-2 1E-1 1E+0 1E+1 1E+2 1E+3
and Olson (1971) and beach sand by Taylor (1948). Fig. 6(a) and Specific surface (m2/g)
(b) shows fitting results for smectite and beach sand respectively. For
the fine-grained smectite, Eq. (25) gave much lower average relative Fig. 7. Fitted parameters: (a) parameter m versus specific surface Ss; (b) parameter C
error and standard deviation ratio than both the classical Kozeny- versus specific surface Ss. Data source refers to Fig. 5.
 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97 95

coarse-grained soils (Santamarina et al., 2002), where LL = liquid limit,
Cu = D60/D10, D10, D50, D60 [mm] are the grain diameters for 10%, 50%
and 60% cumulative passing fractions; ρw is the mass density of water;
Gs is the specific gravity of the minerals.
There is a week correlation between the parameter m and specific
surface area which is related to the size and the shape of soil grains.
However, most of the m values are in a relatively narrow region
(0 ≤ m ≤ 2), and there is an overall increase from 0 ~ 0.1 for sandy soils,
1.0 ± 0.2 for silty soils, to 1.5 ± 0.5 for clayey soils (Fig. 7a). An even
wider range in the similar exponent parameter has been presented for
clayey soils by Samarasinghe et al. (1982), and for rocks by David
et al. (1994). In addition, while Eq. (25) becomes the Kozeny-Carman
equation when parameter m is equal to 0, most of the fitted values of
parameter m are approximately equal to 0 for sandy soils as shown in
Fig. 7a. Therefore, this observation presents some degree of explanation
for why the Kozeny-Carman equation is valid only for coarse grained
soils but not for fine grained ones.
Fig. 7b shows a strong correlation between the parameter C [cm/s]
and the specific surface area Ss [m2/g]. The best fitted line is
C ¼ 2:94  10−4 Ss −1:45
To test the applicability of the proposed Eq. (25), we assumed values
of parameter m equal to 0 for sandy soils, 1.0 for silty soils and 1.5 for
clayey soils. Then, the hydraulic conductivity was predicted by
Eq. (25) with only one single fitted parameter C. Measured values are
compared against the predicted values as shown in Fig. 8. Compared
with the results predicted with two fitted parameters (as shown in
Fig. 5), the results predicted with only one single fitted parameter C pro-
duce a larger residual error but most predicted values still fall within
kmeas/3 ≤ kpredict ≤ 3kmeas.
Notably, if we use the parameter m (0 for sandy soils, 1.0 for silty
soils and 1.5 for clayey soils) and the parameter C determined with
Eq. (28) to calculate the hydraulic conductivity by use of Eq. (25), the
prediction results show relatively large scatter and does not match as
well as Fig. 8 with the measured values. Two reasons appear to be
responsible for the scatter. (1) The data compiled here include undis-
turbed and remolded specimens (see the Appendix Table 1) ranging
from coarse-grained sand to very fine-grained bentonite, and most of
them were measured at the laboratory by different methods (direct
method: constant- or falling-head method, indirect method: Terzaghi's
consolidation method), which leads to uncertainty of the measured
values. (2) Some references of data source did not directly provide the
information of specific surface area. We had to estimate the value of
specific surface area with other available information such as liquid
limit and particle size distribution, which weakens the accuracy of the
fitted parameter C and m, and then of the prediction results of Eq. (25).
4.2. Limitations
(1) The specific surface area was not directly reported but estimated
by some correlations for some of the studies being used, which weakens
the accuracy of the fitted parameter C and m in the predicted Eq. (25) in
some extent. (2) By use of void ratio and specific surface area predicting
hydraulic conductivity misses some other important factors such as
pore size distribution, tortuosity and pore geometry, etc. (3) The mea-
ð28Þ
sured dataset compiled in this paper is vertical hydraulic conductivity,
thus, the fitted parameters cannot capture anisotropy of hydraulic
conductivity.
5. Conclusions
According to the classical Kozeny-Carman approach, a new hydrau-
lic conductivity-void ratio relationship was theoretically derived, and
the Kozeny-Carman relation was proven to be a special case of the pro-
posed equation. This equation was based on the concept of effective
void ratio and the Poiseuille's law. It presents a better capability than
other models to describe measured hydraulic conductivity values of a
wide range of soils, from the coarse-grained to the fine-grained. Partic-
ularly, the proposed equation presents a theoretical explanation to elu-
cidate failure of the Kozeny-Carman equation to predict hydraulic

1E+0
Sandy soils
1E-1
Silty soils
1E-2 Clayey soils

1E-3

1E-4
Predicted k (cm/s)

1E-5

1E-6

1E-7

1E-8

1E-9

1E-10

1E-11

1E-12
1E-12 1E-11 1E-10 1E-9 1E-8 1E-7 1E-6 1E-5 1E-4 1E-3 1E-2 1E-1 1E+0
Measured k (cm/s)

Fig. 8. The measured hydraulic conductivity k versus the predicted k by Eq. (25) with fitted parameter C and m = 0 for sandy soils, m = 1.0 for silty soils and m = 1.5 for clayey soils. Data
source refers to Fig. 5.
96 X. Ren et al. / Engineering Geology 213 (2016) 89–97

conductivity for clayey soils: the existence of immobile water or the
ineffective void ratio. The voids containing immobile water have no
contribution to flow but have the same contribution to the total
void ratio (used in the KC equation to predict hydraulic conductivity)
as other mobile water. This paper develops a new insight to under-
stand the nature of hydraulic conductivity of soils, especially of the
fine-grained ones.
Acknowledgements
This work was supported by the Fundamental Research Funds for
the Central Universities (No. CUG160701), China University of
Geosciences, Wuhan and the National Basic Research Program of
China (973 Program) (No. 2011CB710601). The authors are grateful to
Dr. J. Carlos Santamarina for his help and useful discussions.

Appendix A

Table 1
Database compiled in this paper.

Soil type Data Liquid Specific Specific Experimental method Specimen Source
points limit gravity surface preparation

Smectite 70 1160-190 2.65–2.80 500–700 Consolidation test Remolded Mesri and Olson, 1971
Illite 70 104-83 2.80 / Mesri and Olson, 1971
Kaolinite 38 50-40 2.65 14 Mesri and Olson, 1971
Bentonite 46 211 2.63 156 Consolidation test Remolded Horpibulsuk et al. (2011)
Bangkok clay 56 80 2.66 83 Consolidation test Horpibulsuk et al. (2011)
New Liskeard clay 15 69 (2.70) Permeability test / Raymond (1966)
Don Valley clay 15 41 (2.70) / Raymond (1966)
Dhaka clay 10 40 2.68 / Constant head permeability test Remolded Siddique and Safiullah
(1995)
Champlain sea St-Zotique 30 61-43 (2.70) / Permeability test and oedometer tests Undisturbed Tavenas et al. (1983)
clays Fort 28 70 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Lennox
Batiscan 30 54-35 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
St-Hilaire 50 55 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
St-Alban 32 53-28 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Louiseville 46 59 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
St-Thuribe 38 44 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Canadian clay Broadback 26 30-20 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
2
Broadback 26 24-44 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
6
Matagami 66 74-48 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
USA clay Atchafalaya 30 99 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Sweden clay Lillo 42 111 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Mellosa
Backebol 38 74 (2.70) / Tavenas et al. (1983)
Vasby clay 62 122⁎ (2.70) / Falling- and constant-head perme- Undisturbed Terzaghi et. al. (1996)
Batiscan clay 30 49⁎ (2.70) / ability test Terzaghi et. al. (1996)
St. Hillaire clay 42 55⁎ (2.70) / Terzaghi et. al. (1996)
Berthierville clay 92 46⁎ (2.70) / Terzaghi et. al. (1996)
Beach sand 42 / (2.65) / / / Taylor (1948)
Beach sand 12 / (2.65) / / / Lambe and Whitman
(1969)
Union falls sand 3 / (2.65) / / / Lambe and Whitman
(1969)
Dam filter sand 8 / (2.65) / / / Lambe and Whitman
(1969)
Scituate sand 8 / (2.65) / / / Lambe and Whitman
(1969)
Fort peck sand 3 / (2.65) / / / Lambe and Whitman
(1969)
Sand 11 / (2.65) / / / Chapuis et al. (1989)

Note: The data of liquid limit marked by superscript (*) were obtained from literature of Mesri et al. (1999); the values of specific gravity in bracket are not provided but estimated. The
data coming from Tavenas et al. (1983) were extracted from curve, thus the number of data points was not that accurate.

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