Influence of dry and wet seasons on pore distributions of near-surface
weathered granitic soil using mercury intrusion porosimetry and nuclear
magnetic resonance imaging
Abstract
The near-surface weathered granitic soil (WGS) is easily affected by
cyclic drying and wetting due to seasonal alterations. The
microstructural damage was characterized using the technology of nuclear
magnetic resonance (NMR) imaging and mercury intrusion porosimetry (MIP)
to study the influence of dry and wet seasons impacts on microstructures
of soils. The results revealed that the relaxation time (T2) spectrums
from NMR investigation were strongly affected by multiple wetting-drying
cycles, and the porosity had a positive nonlinear relationship with the
peak areas. As implied in the MIP and NMR analysis, PSD curves of WGS
were characterized by bimodal distributions as the pore diameter in two
peaks ranging from 0.1 μm to 5 μm and 5 μm ~100 μm,
respectively. As the number of cycles increases, the left peak of the
PSD curve successively shifts downwards while the right peak shifts
upwards, implying that a large number of small-sized micro-pores in the
WGS gradually expand and connect to macro-pores. Under the influence of
periodic water migrations in soils, the areas of bright spots in the
T2-weighted images increased, reflecting that the structural damage
degree was accelerated with continued enlargement of internal pores.
Through a comparison between NMR-based and MIP-based PSDs, NMR can
better capture more accurate information on the pore distribution
attributed to its advantage of test principle and nondestructive
scanning. The process of cyclic wetting and drying severely reformed the
microstructure of the WGS, causing the micropores to gradually expand to
form macropores and thus deteriorating the soil microstructure.