In the previous chapter, a probabilistic porous-solid model adequate for the
simulation of soil-water retention curves of soils was developed. In this chapter, the
model is used to interpret more realistically the results of mercury intrusion porosimetry
experiments. Moreover, it is used to obtain the pore size distribution of different soils
while using both boundary branches of the retention curve as data. The numerical and
experimental comparisons for different soils show that the model approximately
reproduces the pore size distribution obtained from mercury intrusion porosimetry tests.
Finally, the procedure to adjust the numerical and experimental soil-water retention
curves in order to obtain the pore size distribution of soils is presented herein.
Keywords: Mercury intrusion porosimetry tests, scanning electron micrographs,
pore size distribution, grain size distribution, superficial tension, contact angle,
soil-water retention curve, critical radius, relative volume, macropores,
mesopores, micropores, hydro-mechanical coupling, soil mixtures, logarithmic
normal distribution, mean size, standard deviation.