Red clay is prone to softening and disintegration when exposed to water, often triggering severe geological disasters. To enhance its resistance to disintegration, this paper employs a homemade wet-dry cycling disintegration apparatus, combined with XRD, SEM, MIP, and fractal theory, to analyze the effects of different activators on the disintegration characteristics and microscopic mechanisms of SSP-improved soil. Under wet-dry cycling, the disintegration process of SSP-improved soil can be divided into five stages: rapid water absorption, saturation wetting, rapid disintegration, softening and dissolution, and stable non-disintegration. As the activator and SSP content increase, the resistance to disintegration of SSP-improved soil gradually enhances. After the addition of activators, the porosity, pore area, pore length and width, and probability entropy of SSP-improved soil decrease (i.e., 7 % NS < 7 % CSW < 7 % NH < undisturbed soil), while the average shape factor, regional probability distribution index, and fractal dimension increase. This is because activators promote ion exchange, cementation, crystallization, and carbonation reactions in SSP-improved soil, generating a substantial amount of hydration products such as C-S(A)-H, Ca(OH)2 and CaCO3, which fill and encapsulate inter-particle pores, thereby reducing water flow channels within the pores. In contrast, the pore structure between particles in undisturbed soil is simple and well-connected, providing favorable conditions for the migration and dissolution of fine particles and the loss of cementing materials, which accelerates the destruction and disintegration of the soil structure.
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