Investigations have been made with a view to arrive at a suitable electrical analogy set-up, for the study of distribution of uplift pressures on structures, like weirs, built on pervious, stratified foundations, where the various layers of the soil differ in permeabilities through so wide ranges, that the method of simulation of such layers by varying the thickness of soil is not practicable.
To simulate a stratified medium, electrolyte solutions of different electrical conductivities, representing the stratified layers, have to be put in watertight compartments, in the electrolytic tray, which necessitates the construction of a suitable partition between the different compartments.
A suitable partition has been designed so that the electrical potential may be transferred from one compartment to the other without affecting the electrical conductivities of the electrolyte solutions, in different compartments, due to diffusion effects. The method has been investigated in some detail regarding tolerances and accuracies, described in the paper.
The method has been applied to a stratified medium, consisting of two layers with permeability ratio of 100:1 and the results have been compared with those obtained with Relaxation Method. The agreement between the results obtained with the help of these two methods is good.
