Journal of the Korean Geotechnical SocietyISSN:1229-2427(Print) 2288-646X(Online)한국지반공학회

Permeation grouting effectively enhances soil strength and decreases permeability of soil; however, the flow of grout is heavily affected by anisotropy of hydraulic conductivity in layers. Therefore, this study investigates the effect of permeability anisotropy on the effective radius of horizontal permeation grout using computational fluid dynamics (CFD). We modeled the horizontal permeation grout flow as a two-phase viscous fluid flow in porous media, and the model incorporated the chemical diffusion and the viscosity variation due to hardening. The numerical simulation reveals that the permeability anisotropy shapes the grout bulb to be elliptic and the dissolution-driven diffusion causes a gradual change in grout pore saturation at the edge of the grout bulb. For the grout pore saturations of 10%, 50% and 90%, the horizontal and vertical radii of grout bulb are estimated when the horizontal-to-vertical permeability ratio varies from 0.01 to 100, and the predictive model equations are suggested. This result contributes to more efficient design of injection strategy in formation layers with permeability anisotropy.