Desiccation cracks in clayey soils can change the structural integrity, mechanical strength, and infiltration characteristics dramatically, and is one of the most important triggers of environment and engineering problems. The development of desiccation cracks includes the change of morphology and the increase of the crack number, resulting the complex three-dimensional cracking networks in soil. Characterizing the refined structure information of cracking network underground is the precondition of evaluating the effects of desiccation cracking on soil structural integrity, also is both emphasis and difficulty of the research on desiccation cracks.
To achieve the refined detection of three-dimensional structure of desiccation cracking networks, Prof. Chao-Sheng Tang’s group proposed a novel integrated scheme (named ERT+) which combined the multi-source data. ERT+ can integrate data from electrical resistivity tomography (ERT), image analysis, and field investigation, achieving the width constrain and depth correction of cracking network morphology. The reliability and accuracy of the ERT+ has been proved by the successful application on in-situ expensive soil slope in Baise city, Guangxi province, China. Besides, the research found the relationship between soil initial parameters and cracking morphology, proposing a general rule that homologous desiccation cracking networks have similar aspect ratios.
Figure 1. Concept of the ERT+ method by integrating multi-source data for 3D soil desiccation cracking
characterization
Figure 2. Overview map showing the researching region (a-b), the quarry, and cracking sites (c)
Figure 3. Three-dimensional geometrics of the crack networks. (a) Site A, (b) Site B, and (c) Site C
The study serves to explore a novel framework for the desiccation cracking network. The study was published in《Geoderma》(Title: Improved 3D characterization of in-situ soil desiccation cracking by multi-source data integration). Jun-Zheng Zhang (PhD student) is the first author of the paper, Prof. Chao-Sheng Tang is the corresponding author, and Wen Mu (PhD student) is the third author. The work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China, the National Key Research and Development Program of China, and the Natural Science Foundation of Jiangsu Province.
Reference: Jun‑Zheng Zhang, Chao-Sheng Tang*, Wen Mu, Jin-Jian Xu, Qi-You Zhou, Bin Shi. Improved 3D characterization of in-situ soil desiccation cracking by multi-source data integration. Geoderma, 2024, 449: 117033.
URL：https://authors.elsevier.com/sd/article/S0016-7061(24)00262-3