Integrating Numerical Modeling and Stochastic Weather Generation to Predict Environmentally Driven Seasonal Ground Movements in Expansive Clays

Expansive clays undergo significant seasonal ground movements due to climate-driven variations in soil moisture, presenting major challenges to infrastructure performance and durability. This study introduces an integrated framework that couples a physics-based numerical model of unsaturated soil behavior with a stochastic weather generator to predict seasonal deformations. The weather generator produces realistic sequences of precipitation and actual evapotranspiration, capturing both seasonal cycles and long-term trends. These fluxes serve as boundary conditions for 1D simulations of a representative expansive clay layer. A Monte Carlo approach with multiple weather realizations enables probabilistic evaluation of surface deformation for a given year. Application to the Dallas–Fort Worth area reveals pronounced seasonal deformation patterns, emphasizing the importance of incorporating soil–atmosphere interactions and accounting for climate variability into geotechnical design and risk assessment.