A Dynamic Model of Cracks Development Based on a 3D Discrete Shrinkage Volume Propagation

Abstract

We attempt to model and visualize the main characteristics of cracks produced on the surface of a desiccating crusted soil: their patterns, their different widths and depths and their dynamics of creation and evolution. In this purpose we propose a method to dynamically produce three-dimensional (3D) quasi-static fractures, which takes into account the characteristics of the soil. The main originality of this method is the use of a 3D discrete propagation of 'shrinkage volumes' with respect to 2D precalculated paths. In order to get realistic cracks, we newly propose to take into account a possibly inhomogeneous thickness of the shrinking layer by using a watershed transformation to compute these paths. Moreover, we use the waterfall algorithm in order to introduce in our simulation a hierarchy notion in the cracks appearance, which is therefore linked with the initial structure of the surface. In this paper, this method is presented in detail and a validation of the cracks patterns by a comparison with real ones is given.

Spatio-temporal patterns in land use and management affecting surface runoff response of agricultural catchments—A review

“…ery effects include a model to determine the pattern of cracks in crusted soils due to shrinkage processes (Valette et al, 2008), or the work by Bronswijk (1989Bronswijk ( , 1998 on subsidence and shrinking of soils. Introducing sealing in catchment-scale models is additionally hindered by the large spatial heterogeneity of seal development resulting from small-scale differences in soil properties, soil cover (e.g.…”

Generating surface crack patterns

“…Using layers of cubic cells to model the volume decrease in the material, they compute the resulting crack widths for the given network and then apply it to a parameterized 3D surface. They further discuss their crack model for soil desiccation in [37]. Our method uses a different combination of physical and non-physical components to create crack patterns.…”

Visualization of cracks by using the local Voronoi decompositions and distributed software

“…O'Brien et al [14] succeeded in modeling brittle and ductile fractures by means of the finite element method. A dynamic model of crack development based on the 3D discrete shrinkage volume propagation is proposed by Valette et al [16]. Comprehensive review articles [17][18][19] summarize models and approaches for simulating crack growth in many fields of engineering.…”