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Morphological characteristics of desiccation-induced cracks in cohesive soils: a critical review

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Abstract

Geotechnical and geo-environmental engineers are interested in the desiccation-induced cracks as they significantly influence the performance of geotechnical structures. A comprehensive understanding is required for developing rational tools for the design of geotechnical structures taking account of the morphological characteristics of desiccation-induced cracks. This study provides a critical review based on more than 100 publications related to the morphological characteristics of cohesive soil desiccation cracks from in situ investigations as well as laboratory studies during the past several decades. Both the in situ and laboratory characterization techniques are comprehensively reviewed, and their advantages and limitations are summarized. The mixture of the hexagonal pattern and the orthogonal pattern is typically observed in desiccation cracks, which is a combined result of the simultaneous strain energy release and the successive interaction between the generated stress field and the existing or induced heterogeneities. A theoretical equation is proposed to estimate the crack block size considering the effects of soil layer thickness, base friction, and environmental factors. It has been found that the crack depth increases linearly with the increasing crack width based on limited measurements at different scales. A reliable in situ characterization technique for the three-dimensional crack morphology and a more effective and fully coupled numerical modelling technique for the multi-physical and multi-scale desiccation cracking behavior are recommended for future works.

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Acknowledgements

Valuable discussions on this research topic with Professor Marcelo Sánchez at Texas A&M University (USA), Dr. Michael Maedo at Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (Brazil), Dr. Guanlong Guo at Westlake University (China), and Miss Mengxi Tan at University of Ottawa (Canada) are sincerely appreciated. In addition, the authors are thankful to the anonymous reviewers whose comments were valuable and have significantly contributed to this paper.

Funding

The financial support for this research was from the China Scholarship Council (CSC)-University of Ottawa Joint Ph.D. Scholarship and Mitacs Globalink Research Award (Funding Request Ref. FR27609) and from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 41731289 and 51879285). The research was also funded by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC).

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  1. State Key Laboratory of Simulation and Regulation of Water Cycle in River Basin, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, 100048, China

    Penghai Yin & Shu Yu

  2. Department of Geotechnical Engineering, China Institute of Water Resources and Hydropower Research, Beijing, 100048, China

    Penghai Yin & Shu Yu

  3. Department of Civil Engineering, University of Ottawa, Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada

    Sai K. Vanapalli

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Yin, P., Vanapalli, S.K. & Yu, S. Morphological characteristics of desiccation-induced cracks in cohesive soils: a critical review. Bull Eng Geol Environ 81, 503 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10064-022-03003-4

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