Unraveling the Mystery of Water-Induced Loess Disintegration: A Comprehensive Review of Experimental Research

Abstract

Loess disintegration is a significant physicochemical and mechanical dissolution process that occurs when loess comes into contact with water. This phenomenon contributes to geological disasters such as loess cave erosion, landslides, and debris flows. The disintegration of loess can be influenced by both internal and external factors. Research on internal factors of loess disintegration has been widely recorded, but the research progress on external environmental factors that affect loess disintegration is not well summarized. This review summarizes the impacts of external water environmental factors on loess disintegration and reveals that six external water environmental factors, namely the temperature of the aqueous solution, hydrodynamic conditions, solution pH, salt concentration and type in the solution, freeze–thaw cycles, and dry–wet cycles, can significantly impact loess disintegration. Furthermore, this review delves into three key research areas in loess disintegration under the influence of these water environmental factors: experimental research on loess disintegration, the disintegration parameters used in such research and their variations, and the water–soil chemical reactions and microstructural changes during loess disintegration. It concludes that current experimental research on loess disintegration suffers from inadequate studies, with existing research associated with poor comparability and weak representativeness, and a lack of comprehensive, systematic analysis of its regularities of influence and response mechanisms from both microscopic and macroscopic perspectives. This paper can provide valuable insights for the prevention of loess geological disasters and engineering safety construction.