Desiccation shrinkage process in clayey soils experimental analysis from digital image correlation

Abstract

During the drying process, an initially saturated clay deforms mainly due to the loss of water. It causes clay shrinkage that represents one of the fundamental reasons of cracking by desiccation. It is of great interest to understand the desiccation process in such complex soils. The main point is that many properties of the material, such as water content distribution, displacement, strain and stress fields. The proposed method of analysis allows to understand more deeply the process of drying in clays including shrinkage, crack initiation and finally, crack network development. This research allows to go further in investigating the drying phenomenon in remolded and initially saturated kaolinitic clay.