Desiccation cracking in clayey soils occurs when they lose moisture, leading to an increase in their compressibility and hydraulic conductivity and hence significant reduction of soil strength. The prediction of desiccation cracking in soils is challenging due to the lack of insights into the complex coupled hydro-mechanical process at the grain scale. In this paper, a new hybrid discrete-continuum numerical framework, capable of capturing hydro-mechanical behaviour of soil at both grain and macro scales, is proposed for predicting desiccation cracking in clayey soil. In this framework, a soil layer is represented by an assembly of DEM particles, each occupies an equivalent continuum space and carries physical properties governing unsaturated flow. These particles move freely in the computational space following the discrete element method (DEM), while their contact network and the continuum mixture theory are used to model the unsaturated flow. The dependence of particle-to-particle contact behaviour on water content is represented by a cohesive-frictional contact model, whose material properties are governed by the water content. In parallel with the theoretical development is a series of experiments on 3D soil desiccation cracking to determine essential properties and provide data for the validation of mechanical and physical behaviour. Very good agreement in both physical behaviour (e.g. evolution of water content) and mechanical behaviour (e.g. occurrence and development of cracks, and distribution of compressive and tensile strains) demonstrates that the proposed framework is capable of capturing the hydro-mechanical behaviour of soil during desiccation. The capability of the proposed framework facilitates numerical experiments for insights into the hydro-mechanical behaviour of unsaturated soils that have not been possible before.
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