Internal erosion characteristics and microstructure effects of undisturbed loess

Loess internal erosion caused by preferential flow often leads to serious loess ground collapse,shallow loess landslides,and other geological disasters.However,there is a lack of quantitative evaluation of the internal erodibility of undisturbed loess under the action of preferential flow,and little is known about the correlation between the internal erodibility of loess and its microstructure.In this study,we carried out a series of hole erosion tests(HET)on undisturbed loess samples from 4 typical locations on China's Loess Plateau.The internal erodibility of loess was quantitatively evaluated through an improved HET method,and its association with initial water content,clay content,and initial water head difference was investigated.On the microscopic scale,the microstructure of loess with different clay content was measured by scanning electron microscopy(SEM).The correlation between pore and particle microstructure parameters and loess internal erosion parameters was established based on grey correlation theory.When the initial water content increased from 10%to 36%,the erodibility index increased from 1 to 2.5.When the clay content increased from 8%to 27.95%,the erodibility index increased 3.5 times.The increase of initial water head difference has a positive linear effect on the internal erodibility of loess.The microstructure analysis shows that with the increase of clay content,the microstructure of undisturbed loess changes from a mosaic structure to a cementation structure,which creates favourable conditions for controlling the internal erosion of loess.Through grey correlation analysis,it has been determined that the microstructure of undisturbed loess has a significant correlation with the critical shear stress,and the loess microstructure morphology strongly correlates with the erosion rate.Under normal circumstances,the higher the clay content,the better the erosion resistance,the better the mechanical stability,and the easier to form a stable cave in loess.This study can provide a reference for revealing the cave formation mechanism in the loess area in the future.

Influence of moisture content on shearing strength of unsaturated undisturbed quaternary system middle pleistocene

The unsaturated undisturbed quaternary system middle pleistocene loess,a typical unsaturated soil,often occurs in the implementation of western development strategy.To obtain the shearing strength characteristics of this unsaturated undisturbed loess,based on the analysis of mineral composition,the triaxial shear test of undisturbed quaternary system middle pleistocene loess under different moisture contents is conducted with the specialized triaxial instrument for unsaturated soil.The test results show that the mainly mineral composition of undisturbed quaternary system middle pleistocene loess is quartz and albite.Under the same confining pressure,the matric suction increases with the decrease of moisture content.The smaller the moisture content,the larger the matric suction;the higher the moisture content,the lower the matric suction.Under the same moisture content,the matric suction increases with the confining pressure and reaches a maximum when the confining pressure is 100 kPa,and then decreases with the increase of confining pressure.This phenomenon is closely related to the grain contact tightness of soil mass under high confining pressure.According to the triaxial test of loess,the sample of loess experiences 4 stages from loading to failure:1) compaction stage;2) compression stage;3) microcrack developing stage;4) shear failure stage.The test sample is of brittle failure(weak softening)under low moisture content and confining pressure.With the decrease of matric suction and the increase of consolidated confining pressure,the stress-strain curve changes from softening type to ideal plastic type.In the shearing strength parameters of unsaturated undisturbed loess,the influence of moisture content on internal friction angle is small,but that on cohesive force is obvious.Therefore,the shearing strength of unsaturated undisturbed loess is higher than that of saturated undisturbed loess and varies with the moisture content.