Abstract
Cracking is a most unwanted development in soil structures undergoing periodic drying and wetting. Desiccation cracks arise in an apparent absence of external forces. Hence, either an internal, self-equilibrated stress pattern resulting from kinematic incompatibilities, or a stress resulting from reaction forces at the constraints appear as a cracking cause, when reaching tensile strength. At a meso-scale, tubular drying pores are considered in the vicinity of a random imperfection, inducing a stress concentration in the presence of significatn pore suction. This approach alloxs one to use the effective stress analysis, which otherwise, away from the stress concentration, usually yields compressive effective stress and hence a physically incompatible criterion for a tensile crack. Recent geometrical data suggestiong that an imperfection as a result of air entry deep into the granular medium penetrates over 4 to 8 internal radii of a typical pore could yield a tensile effective stress sufficient for crack propagation.