I am now a 4-th year Ph. D candidate in the College of Civil Engineering at Hunan University, supervised by Prof. Chao Zhang. I joined Prof. Zhang’s UNSAT lab in 2020 as a 3-rd year undergraduate student.

In the UNSAT lab, I belong to a six-member group focusing on stress state and constitutive relation for unsaturated soil. I assisted Prof. Zhang in managing this group and worked closely with the other five members. In addition to my research regarding desiccation cracking in porous media, I deeply participate in the research of the other five members, e.g., clay pore structure evolution via small-angle neutron scattering and small-angle scattering X-ray scattering, development of swimming robot in granular environments, deep-buried soil’s anisotropies in fabric, stress and modulus, loading collapse phenomenon in high-expansive clay, etc.

Research interests

My recent research passion lies in understanding the underlying physics of desiccation cracking in porous media (particularly in soils), which is a ubiquitous phenomenon in both nature and industry. It is a highly non-linear process, involving multi-physics processes such as evaporation, two-phase flow of vapor and water, heat transfer, and build-up of stress due to both the capillary pressure and the adsorption between nano-particles. With such complex processes:

• How can we accurately predict the initiation of desiccation cracks?

• What is the key mechanism governing the fascinating self-organized pattern of desiccation cracks?

• Can we manipulate the propagation of desiccation cracks to create specific patterns on micro and nano scales?

Now, I am trying to integral cutting-edge insights from optical measurement techniques (e.g., digital image correlation, micron CT, high-speed photography, etc.), elastic-plastic fracture mechanics, phase transition theory in statistic physics, and fractal theory to explore the physics of crack initiation and propagation, as well as the key underlying mechanism and statistic properties of desiccation crack pattern.

If you are interested in my research, please get in touch with me via email (yhyang@hnu.edu.cn) or WeChat.

News

Conference(12/24): I will attend the AGU Annual Meeting and give an oral presentation or a poster titled “Nucleation-percolation transition in clay desiccation cracking”.

Conference(08/24): I attended the IUTAM Symposium Interface Mechanics of Complex Flows and Soft Matter and presented a poster.

Patent(06/24): Our patent was granted (CN202410502010.9), which is about a new device for measuring the fracture toughness of unsaturated clay.

Conference(06/24): I attended the 1st International Yuelu Symposium on “Geotechnical and Underground Engineering” and presented a poster titled “Fabric, stress, and modulus anisotropies of sands during high-stress oedometer test”.

Talk(05/24): I have given an oral presentation about the “Role of substrate roughness in soil desiccation cracking” at InterPore Annual Meeting.

Paper(03/24): Our paper titled “Role of substrate roughness in soil desiccation cracking” was published in Canadian Geotechnical Journal.