Abstract
Desiccation cracking frequently occurs in mud, clay, and pavement. Understanding the evolution of desiccation cracking may facilitate the development of techniques to mitigate cracking and even prevent it from developing altogether. In this study, experimental investigations were performed focusing on the effects of fibers on the evolution of desiccation cracking in soil-cement. Varied types of fibers (i.e., jute fiber and polyvinyl alcohol fiber (PVA)) and fiber contents (i.e., 0%, 0.25%, 0.5%, and 1%) were involved. The digital image correlation (DIC) method was employed to capture the evolution and propagation of cracks in the soil-cement specimens when subjected to desiccation. The results show that the presence of fibers imposes significant effects on the crack propagation pattern as well as the area and length of the cracks in the soil-cement during shrinkage. The addition of fibers, however, insignificantly affects the evaporation rate of the specimens. The crack area and crack length of the specimens decreased significantly when more fibers were included. There were no macroscopic cracks observed in the specimens where the fiber content was 1%. The DIC method effectively helped to determine the evolution of displacement and strain field on the specimens’ surface during the drying process. The DIC method is therefore useful for crack monitoring.
Highlights
The technique of soil-cement is widely used in engineering works due to its advantages of low cost, practicality, convenient construction, and low permeability
Many studies have been conducted on the drying shrinkage of soils, focusing on different influencing factors such as layer thickness [12,13,14,15], size [16], moisture content [17,18,19], evaporation rate [20,21], roughness of the bottom contact surface [22], and temperature [23]
The results indicate that the average width, spacing, and total area of soil cracks decrease obviously with the addition of fibers
Summary
The technique of soil-cement is widely used in engineering works (e.g., foundation treatment [1,2], roadbed improvement [3,4,5], soft soil reinforcement [6,7,8,9], and seepage prevention [10,11]) due to its advantages of low cost, practicality, convenient construction, and low permeability. Exploring the mechanism of the evolution of desiccation cracks and build potential techniques to reduce cracks is practical and meaningful. Zeng et al [12] showed that the influence of interface friction and layer thickness has an obvious coupling effect on the drying and cracking of soil. Khatun et al [15] showed that the cumulative total area of cracks increases along with the increase of layer thickness
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