Abstract
The dry shrinkage cracking of mud paste shows complex dynamical behavior due to some combinations of multiple physical processes such as dry-wet cycle, changing of grading composition in the paste, etc. In this work, we reveal the fractal dimension of cracking patterns on the bentonite pastes, also discuss the time-series variations and coarse mixtures variations. Additionally, we investigate the influence of dry-wet cycle on crack patterns and fractal dimensions. Consequently, the fractal dimensions of mudcracks increased as the cracks propagated, and they converged towards a constant value. And, we found the fractal dimension of mudcracks is closely related to their volumetric shrinkage rate. In contrast, although no significant relationship between crack length and fractal dimension was observed, the dry-wet cycle experiment indicated that bentonite paste may reproducibility their cracking points which occurred in the past.
