The crack growth simulation on mud pastes

Abstract

The fracture morphologies of mud pastes show significantly complicated patterns in nature. The mud pastes have initially fluid-like properties, but gradually change from “fluid” to porous “solid” in their drying process. However, although it has been considered that this phenomena may be induced by the differences between shrinkage ratios of soil skeletons, the mechanical details remain unknown. In this work, we attempt to develop a novel numerical model based on three dimensional finite element method for crack propagation phenomena in bentonite pastes. In order to validate the proposed method, Hausdorff’s fractal dimension of the numerical cracking patterns was compared with those of the experiments. As a result, the numerical results showed reasonable cracking patterns, and the fractal dimension of the patterns by numerical simulation was almost consistent with the experimental results.