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Effect of salt concentration on desiccation cracking behavior of GMZ bentonite

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Abstract

Bentonite has been proposed for use as an engineering barrier and buffer in nuclear waste repositories and has been used frequently in municipal waste landfills. The cracking behavior and deformation properties of this material can be influenced by the chemistry of pore water. In the present work, the influence of salt concentration on the desiccation cracking behavior of GMZ bentonite was investigated with laboratory experiments. Image processing techniques and SEM tests were performed on the specimens which had undergone the desiccation testing in order to analyze the cracking mechanisms. Results show that the water evaporation process can be identified by a steady rate stage, a falling rate stage and a residual stage. The water evaporation rate is strongly affected by the salt concentration of the pore water; higher salt concentrations result in lower evaporation rates; the final water content is strongly impacted by a high initial salinity; otherwise the water contents are very similar for the residual stage. During desiccating, most of cracks appeared at the steady evaporation stage. The cracking morphology and patterns were greatly affected by the salt concentration of the pore water; and larger crack lengths and lower crack densities were obtained as the initial salinity was increased.

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Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (41422207, 41527801), Scientific Research Fund of Hunan Provincial Education Department (15A009), the Planned Science and Technology Project of Changsha, Hunan Province (KQ1602037), Opening Fund of Hunan Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Engineering Safety (13KZ|KZ070030103) and Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Key Laboratory of Geotechnical and Underground Engineering of Ministry of Education, Department of Geotechnical Engineering, Tongji University, 1239 Siping Road, Shanghai, 200092, People’s Republic of China

    Xu-Dong Zhang, Yong-Gui Chen & Wei-Min Ye

  2. Laboratoire Navier/CERMES, Ecole des Ponts - ParisTech, 6-8 av. Blaise Pascal, Cite Descartes, 77455, Marne-la-Vallee, France

    Yu-Jun Cui

  3. Institute of Geotechnical Engineering, School of Transportation, Southeast University, Nanjing, 200009, People’s Republic of China

    Yong-Feng Deng

  4. Hunan Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Engineering Safety, Xiangtan University, Xiangtan, 411105, People’s Republic of China

    Bin Chen

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  1. Xu-Dong Zhang
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Correspondence to Yong-Gui Chen.

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Zhang, XD., Chen, YG., Ye, WM. et al. Effect of salt concentration on desiccation cracking behavior of GMZ bentonite. Environ Earth Sci 76, 531 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12665-017-6872-6

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