2008 Volume 11 Pages 443-450
Empirically, it is known that the vegetation influences on the earth structure. Kawai et al. focused on the effects of water uptake induced by the vegetation. They regarded it as an effect of decreasing soil moisture and applied the effect to unsaturated soil/water coupled F. E. analysis. In this study, the soil/water coupled F. E. analysis code is rearranged with the constitutive model for unsaturated soil proposed by Ohno et al.. In their model, the effective degree of saturation are applied as a parameter expressing stiffness of unsaturated soil to enable application of unsaturated soil mechanics to actual problem in geotechnical engineering site. To verify the applicability of soil/water coupled analysis, the accident that the vegetation uptake work brought about the non-uniform settlement of the ground and damaged the building in Poland are simulated. Consequently, it was found that the uptake increased suction and encouraged non-uniform settlement of ground surface. Its effects appeared prominently in a dry ground having low groundwater level and much uptake. This method is effective to understand the effects of vegetation.
