Probability Density Function of Geometrical Properties of Soil Desiccation Cracks at Different Relative Humidity Levels
Publication: Geo-Risk 2023
ABSTRACT
Desiccation cracking in clayey soils can cause significant issues to slopes and earthen structures. Environmental and climatic variables such as temperature and relative humidity are among the key factors controlling the formation and propagation of soil desiccation cracks. Spatial patterns of soil desiccation cracking inherently pose a non-deterministic and complex problem. The main objective of this study is to investigate the statistical distribution of geometrical properties of soil desiccation cracks at different levels of relative humidity (RH). For this purpose, we employed an image processing technique to probabilistically analyze the spatial patterns in an extensive set of soil cracking images reported in the literature showing the dynamics of surface cracks in a fat clay tested at six different RH levels ranging from 15% to 93%. Specifically, we determined the probability density function for several geometrical properties of cracking, including the average length and width of the crack, the crack intersection angle, and the crack area. The results show that RH level strongly influences the geometrical attributes of cracks. Elevated levels of the applied RH are found to increase the most probable value (MPV), representing the maximum value of distribution probability for each geometrical property. This observation implies that elevated RH increases the likelihood of forming longer and wider desiccation cracks. In all cases examined, the crack intersection angles are primarily distributed from 80 to 100 degrees with an MPV of about 90 degrees.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Geo-Risk 2023
Pages: 137 - 146
History
Published online: Jul 20, 2023
ASCE Technical Topics:
- Clays
- Climate change
- Climates
- Computer vision and image processing
- Continuum mechanics
- Cracking
- Design (by type)
- Engineering fundamentals
- Engineering mechanics
- Environmental engineering
- Fracture mechanics
- Geomechanics
- Geometrics
- Geotechnical engineering
- Highway and road design
- Humidity
- Mathematics
- Meteorology
- Methodology (by type)
- Probability
- Soil mechanics
- Soil properties
- Soils (by type)
- Solid mechanics
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