In recent years the study of desiccation cracks in soils has receiving increasing attention, in both experimental research and numerical modeling. However, it is still difficult to capture the actual geometry of the crack network typically developed in soils during drying. A 2D laser profile scanner is used in this research to overcome this problem. The study focuses on a natural soil from Indonesia. Soil samples were prepared in a circular plate and subjected to drying under controlled conditions in the laboratory. The digital model of the soil obtained from the laser has been post-processed with the commercial software Surfer. A 3D representation of the cracked soil is obtained by mean of this technique. An additional advantage of the proposed technique is that the laser also allows a reliable estimation of key variables related to drying soils, such as volume change, crack geometry, cracks depth and aperture.
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