Optimization of Raw Materials for Preparation of Transparent Soil Based on Analytic Hierarchy Process

The application of man-made transparent soil has greatly contributed to the development of the visual research in physical model test. Comparing to the traditional model test, the transparent soil has advantages with respect to transparency, visualization, lower cost and utility et al. However, the transparency of material itself seriously restricted the effect of the results during the model text. This paper took the transparency as the evaluation standard, based on the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) to make clear the factors on transparency of transparent soil which are: Purity and transparency of materials, matching degree of refractive index, size distribution of aggregate, air content and loading-unloading rate while consolidation and taking the commonly used combinations of raw materials as the example, the optimal combination was obtained. The work described in this study can provide a certain theoretical guidance for selection of raw materials and to improve the transparency during the preparation of transparent soil.