Investigation of desiccation cracking of earthen site soils treated by enzyme-induced calcium carbonate precipitation (EICP)

Abstract

The infiltration of groundwater and surface water is critical for the development of desiccation cracking of earthen site soils. It potentially leads to changes in the microscopic structures of pore water networks, posing a threat to the stability of earthen site soils. In this study, the effects of cementation solution concentrations on water holding capacity of earthen site soils and microscopic characteristics were investigated using the methods of enzyme-induced calcium carbonate precipitation (EICP), volumetric shrinkage and suction tests under wetting-drying loadings, and microscopic tests. The microscopic characteristics regarding pore structures were used to interpret the mechanism of desiccation cracking of EICP-treated earthen site soils from the microscopic perspective. The results show that the rate of drying shrinkage and sensitivity to drying and wetting conditions of earthen site soils are notably reduced by the method of EICP. The volumetric shrinkage curves appear three-stage evolving trends. The microscopic tests show that the treated earthen site soils feature bimodal distributions of pore structures. With this regard, the uniformities of pores are significantly improved, for which large and medium pores of untreated soils are filled by the method of EICP. Small and micro pores are compressed, which reduces the potential connectivity of pores inside earthen site soils. The research outcomes can provide fundamental knowledge for improving desiccation cracking of earthen site soils by the method of EICP.

Keywords

Earthen site soil / Desiccation cracking / Enzyme-induced calcium carbonate precipitation (EICP) / Distribution of pores / Microscopic mechanism

CRediT authorship contribution statement

Jianwei Zhang: Conceptualization, Formal analysis, Funding acquisition, Investigation, Methodology, Validation, Visualization, Writing – original draft, Writing – review & editing. Peikun Wang: Investigation, Validation, Writing – review & editing. Yue Dong: Investigation, Validation, Writing – review & editing. Junjie Zheng: Conceptualization, Investigation, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Yu Song: Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Hanlong Liu: Investigation, Writing – review & editing. Min Zhang: Writing – review & editing, Visualization, Supervision, Investigation, Funding acquisition, Formal analysis, Conceptualization.

Data Availability Statement

Data are available on request.

Declaration of Competing Interest

Hanlong Liu is the Editor-in-Chief for Biogeotechnics, he was not involved in the editorial review or the decision to publish this article. The other authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant nos. 42177454, 42307243), Joint Fund of the Technical R&D Program of Henan Province (Grant no. 225200810005), the Natural Science Foundation of Henan (Grant no. 232300420073), and Henan Provincial Science and Technology Research Project (Grant no. 242102321012). We thank all anonymous reviewers for providing helpful comments on how to improve the manuscript.

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