Quantitative Study for the Impact of Fines Content on Soil Surface Cracking

Abstract

Cracking development in soils is of significance for their physical and mechanical properties. The fines content in soils is one of the most important factors in cracking development, leading to it being of great importance to quantitatively study how the cracking development is influenced by the fines content. In this paper, experimental simulations on soil surface cracking were first conducted in the lab with soil from Jiangjia Valley. Digital image processing technology was then applied to investigate cracking in soil with different fines content by describing the surface cracks with crack area density Ac (ratio of all cracks’ area to total surface area of the cracked soil) and crack line density Lc (ratio of all cracks’ perimeters to total surface area of the cracked soil). The conclusions are drawn as follows: 1) Surface cracks increase with fines content going up; specifically, when the soil mass with fines content ranging from 20% to 30%, there is a significant increase in cracks; There is no crack developed in the soil with no fines, comparing to the gradual increase in soils with other fines content. 2) With the loss of water content, Ac and Lc will increase until a constant value is reached. However, small cracks will be closed and big ones will evolve into smaller ones if enough water is added. 3) Soil mass with fines content less than 20% is inclined to have small cracks when it is drying and cracks will be closed if enough water is added; on the other hand, soil mass with fines content more than 20% is inclined to have bigger cracks and they will become smaller when submerged into water. 4) After times of wetting and drying cycles, soil mass shrinks and soil dry density increases, which leads to the decrease of Dc and Lc, which suggests soil with larger dry density will probably have fewer cracks.