Mechanism, influencing factors and research methods for soil desiccation cracking: a review

The study of soil cracking is becoming increasingly important because of rising global temperatures and frequent natural disasters. And it poses a huge threat to the infrastructure. In the literature, soil cracking has been tackled by many researchers with various methods. The desiccation cracking process is influenced by various factors, such as soil thickness, temperature, and wet-dry cycles, which makes the process extremely complex. A large number of theoretical studies, indoor experiments and numerical simulations have been carried out. Many advanced techniques, such as X-ray CT and image processing, have also been used in this process. In this paper, the research work of soil cracking is briefly reviewed and summarized, including cracking mechanism, influencing factors of cracking, the comparison of different research methods. The review also lists current limitations and some promising directions for future research.