Fibrous Organic Soils: Linking Multiscale Experimental and Numerical Approaches

Abstract Differently from any other soil, natural fibrous organic soils show high compressibility and considerable creep combined with extremely high friction angle. These unusual characteristics are attributed to the role of the natural heterogeneous system of fibres, which is assumed to hinder reliable description of the mechanical behaviour of these soils. To fill the knowledge gap, diverse experimental and numerical tools are being developed, in an attempt to isolate and model the kinematics of fibres at the micro-scale. Combining these approaches and upscaling the information at the continuum level allows addressing more efficiently and more robustly the analysis of the engineering response of these soils, and provides a tool for better evaluating the possible consequences of accelerated degradation of the fibrous fabric at increasing climatic stresses.