ABSTRACT
Physical models of small-scale geotechnical problems are thought-provoking didactic tools that facilitate the understanding of some physical phenomena and theoretical concepts. In a glass wall tank measuring 150 × 50 × 10 cm, classical two-dimensional seepage problems, such as the flow under sheet pile wall and through earth dams with and without drainage blanket, were reproduced on reduced model tests. Medium sand was used. The total seepage discharges were measured as well as the piezometric heads in certain points of the models. Dyes were applied to reveal the flow lines. The simple and well defined boundary conditions helped introducing methods for tracing flow nets by hand as well through numerical methods, such as the finite element method (FEM). FEM results were compared to the physical model measurements and the flow nets obtained by FEM were superimposed on model photos, enhancing the learning process. More complex phenomena, such as the flow in the unsaturated zone, could also be visualised. This article presents the use of these reduced models as a didactic tool in undergraduate and post postgraduate courses in Civil Engineering at UFRJ.
