Engineering Properties of Contaminated Soils
In the Geotechnical profession, historically only water and air were assumed as pore fluids where interactions of pore fluids with solid soil particles were used to describes the soil behavior. When the world encountered soil contamination, it was found that the soil properties vary considerably due to soil contamination. For instance one can find in literature that the soil conductivity will increase as well as decrease by several orders of magnitude due to contamination. Therefore, it is essential to understand the mechanisms contributing to such variation. Also, contaminated soil allowed the reevaluation of soil-pore fluid interactions for pore fluids other than air and water. The traditional double-layer theory alone could not explain the engineering behavior of contaminated soils as the contributions of other physical and chemical properties were not included in the above model. At NJIT extensive research program was conducted to investigate engineering properties of contaminated soils. He first used the electrical properties to predict the mechanical properties of contaminated soils. He acquired all the advanced equipment needed to measure the engineering properties of contaminated soils. Through his funded research, he has published (or pending) six journal papers on different aspects of contaminated soils. These finding will be combined and will be published as a textbook. Now Dr. Meegoda is contacted very often to review papers on engineering properties of soils.
Funding: National Science Foundation, "Influence of Chemical Contaminants on Permeability and Effective Porosity of Clays," $77,950.00, Grant # BES-8708834, July 1987-June 1990.
New Jersey Department of Higher Education and the Foundation at New Jersey Institute of Technology, " A New Index to Characterize the Contaminated Soils," $47,000.00, July 1986- June 1989.
Publications: "A Method to Measure the Effective Porosity of Clays", ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal, Vol. 15 #4, December 1992, Co-author: Gunasekera, S. D., pp. 340-351
"Compaction Characteristics of Contaminated Soils-Reuse as a Road Base Material" Recycled Materials in Geotechnical Applications, ASCE Geotechnical Special Publication # 79, C. Vipulanandan and David J. Elton, Editors, ISBN: 0-7844-0387-2, 1998, pp. 195-209, Co-authors: Bin Chen, Samiddha D. Gunasekera and Philip Pederson.
"Treatment of Oil Contaminated Soils for Identification and Classification", ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal, Vol. # 18, #1, March 1995, pp. 41-49, Co-author: P. Ratnaweera
"The Compressibility of Contaminated Clay Soils", ASTM Geotechnical Testing Journal, Vol. 17, #1, March 1994, pp. 101-112, Co-author: P. Ratnaweera
"Long-term and Short-term Hydraulic Conductivities of Contaminated Clays", ASCE Env. Engineering Journal, Vol. 119, No. 4, pp. 725-743, July 1993, Co-author: Rajapakse, R. A.
Students: Gunasekera, S. D. (MS), Rajapakse, R., P. (MS) Ratnaweera P. (MS and Ph. D.), Bin Chen (MS-project), Mr. Angel P. Cobo (BS), Ms. Lucie Lops (BS)