<p>Many clay rock formations exhibit swelling behavior when water accesses to the rock. Rock swelling changes the stress conditions due to swelling pressures and/or changes the volumetric strain due to swelling expansion, both of which have the potential to affect rock permeability and, in turn, water access to the rock. Understanding this coupled behavior is essential for geotechnical applications. We propose novel flow-through swelling experiments that allow the simultaneous observation of saturated permeability, stress and/or strain of clay rock samples during swelling. The setup accounts for the anisotropic properties of clay rocks and assumes that water flow is most pronounced parallel to the bedding, while swelling is most pronounced perpendicular to the bedding. Flow-through swelling pressure and heave tests are conducted to observe the separate effects of swelling stress and strain development, respectively, on the saturated permeability; while a flow-through multi-load test is conducted to observe the simultaneous effect of stress and strain on saturated permeability. The main aim of the paper is to present the experimental setup and procedures. The research has also led to initial results. Surprisingly, initial results from the flow-through multi-load test suggest that saturated permeability remains nearly constant during unloading and rock swelling. This is interpreted as an increase in permeability due to unloading (decrease in swelling stress), which opens water pathways, being compensated by a decrease in permeability due to swelling expansion (increase in swelling strain), which closes water pathways. Further experiments are needed to confirm our initial results with a larger database.</p>