A fiber Bragg grating (FBG)-based aluminum oxide tube packed sensor (ATPS) was developed for the fast detection of the soil moisture profile in highway slopes and subgrades. The novel ATPS consists of an aluminum oxide tube with a diameter of 5 mm, an optical fiber containing a quasi-distributed FBG sensors, a “U”-shaped resistance wire, and a flange. There are four 0.9-mm diameter holes in the ATPS. Laboratory experiments were carried out to calibrate the relationship between the thermal response of ATPS and the soil moisture content. Two laboratory rainfall validation model tests were performed to validate the ATPS for capturing the soil moisture profile in highway slopes and subgrades. During the validations, the accuracy of the ATPS was quantified, and water infiltration through grassy and grassless ground surfaces were investigated. The calibrations indicate that the ATPS can detect and record real-time changes in the highway slope and subgrade moisture after rainfall, and reveal the most dangerous zones that occur at the connection between different construction materials. The average measurement accuracy of soil moisture monitoring was 0.015 m³/m³. Please note that the connection is where cracks form easily and the soil hydraulic conductivity increases significantly. The test results also indicate that grassy cover (lawn) significantly prevents water infiltration during the first few minutes of rainfall (twelve minutes in this study), after which, however, the infiltration rate drops sharply. The influence of lawn on water infiltration depends on the soil structure, hydraulic conductivity, and rainfall time. In summary, due to its small size and fast detection, the ATPS is a portable probe that can be used for moisture monitoring in highway slopes and subgrades.

Calcareous sand has been widely used as a construction material for offshore projects; however, the problem of foundation settlement caused by particle crushing cannot be ignored. Although many methods for reinforcing calcareous sands have been proposed, they are difficult to apply on-site. In this study, a permeable polyurethane polymer adhesive (PPA) was used to reinforce calcareous sands, and its mechanical properties after reinforcement were investigated through compression creep, direct shear, and triaxial shear tests. The reinforcement mechanism was analyzed using optical microscopy, CT tomography, and mercury intrusion porosimetry. The experimental results indicate that there is a critical time during the compression creep process. Once the critical time is surpassed, creep accelerates again, causing failure of the traditional Burgers and Murayama models. The direct shear strength of the fiber- and geogrid-reinforced calcareous sand reinforced by PPA was approximately nine times greater than that without PPA. The influence of normal stress was not significant when the moisture content was less than 10%, but when the moisture content was more than 10%, the shear strength increased with an increase in vertical normal stress. Strain-softening features can be observed in triaxial shear tests under conditions of low confining pressure, and the relationship between the deviatoric stress and strain can be described using the Duncan–Chang model before softening occurs. The moisture content also has a significant influence on the peak strength and cohesive force but has little influence on the internal friction angle and Poisson’s ratio. This influence is caused by the different PPA structures among the particles. The higher the moisture content, the greater the number of pores left after grouting PPA.

Water infiltration in soil is a complex process that still requires appreciation of interactions among three phases (soil particles, water and air) to enable accurate estimation of water transport rates. To simulate this process, the Green–Ampt (GA) model and the Modified Green-Ampt (MGA) model introduced in the paper “A new method to estimate soil water infiltration based on a modified Green–Ampt model” have been widely used. The GA model is based on the hypothesis that the advance of the wetting front in soil under matric suction can be treated as a rectangular piston flow that is instantaneously transformed after passage of the infiltration front, and the MGA model does not contain the influence of pore size change. This cannot accurately reflect the soil moisture change process from unsaturation to saturation. Due to soil stratification and other inhomogeneity, predictions produced with these models often differ widely from observations. To quickly obtain the soil moisture distribution after passage of the wetting front for horizontal infiltration, an improved modified Green–Ampt (IMGA) model is presented, which estimates the soil moisture profile along a horizontal column in a piecewise manner with three functions. A logarithmic function is used to describe the gradual soil saturation process in the transmission zone, and two linear functions are used to represent the wetting zone. The algorithm of the IMGA model for estimating the water infiltration rate and cumulative infiltration is configured. To verify the effectiveness of IMGA model, a lab model test was performed, and a numerical model was built to solve the horizontal one-dimensional Richards equation using the finite–element method. The results show that the IMGA model is more accurate than the GA and MGA models. The horizontal soil moisture profiles obtained by the IMGA model are closer to the measured data than the numerical simulation results. The relative errors of the MGA and IMGA models decrease with an increase in infiltration time, whereas that of the GA model first decreases and then increases with infiltration time. The primary novelty of this study is nonlinear description of soil moisture content distribution, and derivation of unit transfer coefficient.