Analysis of microscopic pore structures of the silty clay before and after freezing–thawing under the subway vibration loading

With the rapid development of the subway rail transit, the effect of the cyclic loading on the surrounding foundations and buildings has drawn wide attention. In addition to the in situ tests and the laboratory triaxial tests, microscopic tests also provide an effective way to clarify the physical and mechanical characteristics of soils. On the other hand, the characteristics of the soft silty clay before and after freezing–thawing has been less studied. In this paper, the scanning electron microscope (SEM) tests following the cyclic triaxial tests of silty clay layer were performed to investigate the variations of the microscopic pore structures of the layer before and after freezing–thawing. The corrected Otsu method was used to obtain the binary SEM images of silty clay. The porosity results demonstrate that the magnifications from 1000× up to 5000× were suitable for observation of the silty clay microstructures. The binary SEM images of soil pore structures were quantitatively analyzed, including the porosity, the size distribution, the pore shape coefficient, the pore orientation distribution and the fractal dimension. The pore orientation of samples without loading is arranged in the horizontal direction, while the pores of samples under cyclic loadings are arranged in the vertical. After freezing–thawing, the mean anisotropy value of the microscopic pore structures increased about 12% and the porosity of samples without loadings increases about 11.24%. The lower the freezing temperature is, the larger the porosity within the samples becomes. However, the freezing–thawing has little effect on the pore shape coefficient of the silty clay. The porosity of the silty clay increases with an increase in pore diameter, but it decreases with the increase in excess pore pressure. In addition, the microscopic pore structures of the silty clay exhibit fractal characteristics. The fractal dimension is reduced by the disturbance from the effect of freezing–thawing, coupled with the effect of cyclic loading.