Salient factors controlling desiccation cracking of clay in laboratory experiments

This paper elucidates some of the controlling factors governing soil desiccation. The desiccation tests were conducted on three materials – clay, potato starch and milled quartz sand – all three featuring similar fracture energy. Two controlling factors were identified in desiccation cracking, regardless of the material. The first is the tensile stress and strain energy development within the material when the material is restrained against shrinkage. The distribution of the tensile stress will depend on the boundary conditions and material stiffness, and will dictate where cracks are likely to originate. The second factor is that the exact positions of crack initiations will be controlled by the flaws and/or pores within the material. For materials such as clay, with very fine particles, the cracking mechanism is governed by flaws, since the desaturation of fine pores would require very high suction stress, and this requirement leads to sequential cracking and orthogonal crack patterns. If the material has particles giving relatively large and uniform pore sizes with high moisture diffusivity leading to high shrinkage energy prior to cracking, then the fracture energy balance indicates that cracking can occur in near hexagonal patterns with 120° crack initiations, which occur predominantly simultaneously. However, even for materials with lower moisture diffusivity, such as for clay, high desiccation rates can give rise to an ‘effective layer' over which high suctions and strain energy develop, leading to almost simultaneous dense cracking.