Abstract
A new ecological substrate is proposed to achieve a desired electric conduction and heating to protect the slope plants from freeze injury. Expanded polystyrene (EPS), cement, carbon fiber, graphite, and raw soil are the main components of the ecological substrate. The electrical conductivity, heating efficiency, thermo-sensitivity, and heat preservation of the substrate are experimentally investigated. The result shows that the addition of carbon fiber could significantly decrease resistivity of substrate, but the effect of fiber content exceeding 3% on the resistivity of substrate becomes insignificant. Conductive fine materials (i.e., carbon fiber and graphite powder) covering the surface of EPS would result in a significant reduction of the global resistivity of non-dry substrate, but it could only slightly affect the counterpart of the completely dry substrates. The substrate could hardly be formed when the EPS content exceeds 4%. As EPS content increases, the contact surface decreases and the resistivity of the substrate increases. The peak temperature at 30 min of substrate without root is higher than that of substrate with plant roots. Nevertheless, the temperature alteration ratio below 40 °C of substrate with plant root is nearly the same as its counterpart in the substrate without roots. The resistance of the substrate with plant roots increases with the temperature. The resistance of rootless substrate decreases by the heat action of the loosely bound water. EPS particles improve the heat preservation performance of substrate, but the heat preservation performance of substrate degrades with the growth of plants.
Highlights
Exposed slopes are most prone to water erosion, in areas with a high rainfall, thereby often leading to disastrous landslides [1]
It is observed that the resistivity decreases exponentially with the increase of carbon fiber content for the specimens with all Expanded polystyrene (EPS) contents, especially when fiber content is less than 3%
When the content of carbon fiber less than 3%, the volume fraction is less than the percolation threshold
Summary
Exposed slopes are most prone to water erosion, in areas with a high rainfall, thereby often leading to disastrous landslides [1]. Instead of traditional civil engineering measures, the use of plants on slopes to prevent landslides and slope instability has received increasing attentions by many researchers over the past years [7,8]. It has been widely reported that the coverage of vegetation with the plant roots could significantly reduce the slope surface erosion and decrease the soil and water loss [9,10,11]. Due to the high production efficiency, soil-spraying technology, which was first developed by Japanese scholars [15], has been widely used in vegetation engineering for slope restoration. It was reported that it is difficult to facilitate vegetation on the steep slopes [16] To address this issue, various researchers [17] attempted to spray the ecological substrates on the slope surface for the slope restoration.
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