Effect of clay content and moisture content on fracture development of red clay

Abstract

In the process of red clay moisture desorption, the soil is easy to shrink and produce cracks, which impacts the strength of the soil. Geological disasters caused by dry shrinkage and cracking of soil have occurred continuously. The influence of clay content and initial moisture content on the fracture development of red clay was studied by moisture-desorption cracking experiment in the laboratory, and the influence of clay content and initial moisture content on the fracture development of red clay was revealed, which provided a theoretical basis for the engineering practice of red clay. We selected the red clay from Guilin, Guangxi, and successively added clay particles to the red clay with the lowest clay content to prepare samples with different clay content and conducted moisture desorption and cracking experiments. The experiment results showed that: the initial moisture content had the greatest influence on the fracture morphology, while the clay content was not obvious; as the moisture content was constant, the final fracture area decreased with the increase of clay content; with the increase of initial moisture content, the fracture width of the sample with the same clay content continued to increase; with the increase of clay content, the fracture width of the samples with the same initial moisture content showed a decreasing trend.