Impact of Salinity on the Erosion Threshold, Yield Stress, and Gelatinous State of a Cohesive Clay

Abstract

Clay is the main component that contributes to sediment cohesiveness. Salinity impacts its transport, which controls the electrochemical force among the sediment grains. Here, we quantify the impacts of salinity on the erosion threshold, yield stress, and the microstructures of a fluorescently labeled smectite clay, laponite, by combining flume experiments, rheometer measurements, and macro‐ and microscopic imaging. We show that the critical shear stress for clay erosion, τb,crit, increases by one order of magnitude with increasing salinity when salinity <1.5 ppt and slightly decreases when salinity >1.5 ppt showing a weaker dependency upon salinity. We further show that the yield stress, τy, of the clay remains roughly a constant at salinity less than 1.5 ppt and decreases by over one order of magnitude at salinity larger than 1.5 ppt. This change in the dependency of τb,crit and yield stress on salinity corresponds to a change in the gelatinous state of clay, from gel‐like structures to phase‐separated structures as salinity increases. Our results provide a quantitative characterization of the dependency of clay erosion threshold and yield stress on salinity and highlight the importance of the clay gelatinous state in controlling clay transport.