Study on the Crack Evolution Process and Stress Redistribution near Crack Tip in Soil

Abstract

Cracks are the visual manifestation of soil failure. Exploring the propagation process of soil cracks is of great significance to the safety of geotechnical engineering. However, this part of the work is limited by the simulation technology and complex properties of soils. Whether indoor or numerical experiments are in the exploratory stage, the existing results often rely on a specific engineering background. As a result, there is no universal cognitive conclusion. In this paper, the evolution process of cracks in soil was simulated under the condition of loading and unloading and different stress paths with specially developed experiment equipment, and the objective phenomena in the process of crack propagation are systematically summarized. Then, based on the Mohr–Coulomb theory, the stress distribution near the tip of the soil cracks was simulated and analyzed by the extended finite-element method. On the one hand, the reasonableness of laboratory experiments is verified. However, the propagation mechanism of soil cracks is revealed. The whole work has a positive guiding significance for the research and prediction of the crack evolution process in soil.