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Abstract
Extensive studies have been conducted by earlier researchers to understand cracking characteristics of fine-grained soils. Based on these studies, several theories and models which facilitate understanding the effect of various soil- and environment-specific parameters (viz., clay content, plasticity, free swelling index, specimen dimensions, boundary conditions, temperature, and humidity) that influence cracking characteristics of such soils have been proposed. A critical synthesis of the existing literature reveals that selection of any crack sealing/arresting technique would largely depend on the most critical of these parameters. However, studies related to identification of this critical parameter(s) and its (their) influence on cracking characteristics of fine-grained soils are not available in the existing literature. Hence, efforts have been made in the present study to establish the effect of each of these parameters on the cracking characteristics of fine-grained soils and the most critical parameter(s) has/have been identified. To achieve this, the Taguchi method, which is basically a statistical method and has been widely adopted for designing experiments and optimizing and/or detecting the most influential parameter(s) from the set of parameters of any multi-variant problem, has been employed. From the present study, it has been demonstrated that temperature, humidity, and mineralogy are the most critical parameters that affect cracking behavior of fine-grained soils.