Soil-Water Management System for Sustainable Geotechnical Design in Kazakhstan

Faculty-development competitive research grants program for 2023-2025

The fundamental goal of this research is to develop an innovative soil-water sensing technology for for determination of water retention curve, unsaturated permeability and unsaturated shear strength for different soil types for sustainable geotechnical design in Kazakhstan which includes a user-friendly application in geotechnical design and analyses as well as soil and agricultural science. The works are divided into 5 work packages:
 WP #1 – Development of integrated wireless moisture-suction sensor with high suction measurement range, low maintenance and fast response time. The new suction sensor will be developed using polymer to enable high suction measurement and to reduce the maintenance cost and power consumption of the sensor.
 WP #2 – Development of mathematical equations and models for determination of water retention curve, unsaturated permeability and unsaturated shear strength for different soil types. The variability with respect to soil density, soil plasticity, void will be incorporated in the machine learning for development of suitable algorithm for estimation of reasonable unsaturated soil properties for relevant soil type.
 WP#3 – Analyses of historical climatic data and projected climatic data in Kazakshtan to enable the incorporation of the effect of climate change in the data analytics of the sensing technology.
 WP#4 – Development of user-friendly Apps and website for automatic estimation of unsaturated soil properties based on basic soil properties for different soil classifications.
 WP#5 – Verification using laboratory testing and numerical analyses