Mechanisms of desiccation cracking of soil : Validation
Mechanisms of shrinkage and the conditions leading to cracking of drying soils are addressed. An elastic formulation of the hydro-mechanical drying problem is presented. It relies on the analogy which can be drawn between the desiccation process and thermo-elasticity. The validity of the analogy is discussed in the light of finite element simulations of air drying experiments on a rectangular soil slab resting on a substrate. Two kinds of tests are dealt with: free desiccation and substrate constrained desiccation tests, with different kinematic boundary conditions. The discussed model is able to reproduce some of the experimental observations.
Peron_et_al_NumogX.pdf
restricted
294.97 KB
Adobe PDF
6183afba9bf34fa22a0f01b8cdbd5fd5