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Soil shrinkage leads to cracking of expansive soil during desiccation. Prevention of crack propagation in soil is of paramount importance. This research examines the effect of auxetic yarns, in control of expansive soil desiccation cracks. In this study, auxetic yarns with optimal properties were produced. Using an innovative test method, the influence of auxetic yarn structure on the prevention of soil crack propagation was investigated. It was found that the inclusion of auxetic yarns in the expansive soil results in a 9.94% reduction in crack propagation of the soil. In order to confirm the positive effect of auxetic yarns on the behavior of the soil samples, pull-out test was conducted on the auxetic yarns incorporated in the soil samples. The interaction between the soil and the auxetic yarn was found to be much higher than the interaction between the equivalent non-auxetic yarn and the same soil. This was not only attributed to the transverse expansion of auxetic yarn, but also to the helical structure that occurs in such yarn during the pull-out. The auxetic effect of the yarn results in a 27.3% increase in the force needed to pull the yarn from the soil matrix. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, a new structure for designing auxetic yarn and its geometrical analysis is presented. The proposed structure is referred to as a double-core helical auxetic yarn (DC-HAY). It consists of two core components of soft yarn with a larger diameter and one wrap component of stiff yarn with a smaller diameter. A primary geometrical model for predicting the Poisson's ratio of the structure was presented through the deformation analysis of the DC-HAY during the tensile loading. Also, the primary proposed model was modified by considering the non-linear behavior of Poisson's ratio of the core components. For the verification of the proposed models, some experiments were conducted based on the initial wrapping angle, as well as the diameter ratio and modulus ratio of components. The results showed that the proposed yarn structure exhibits an apparent auxetic outcome. Moreover, the modified model is capable of predicting the maximum negative Poisson's ratio of the DC-HAY with a desirable error. Furthermore, it was found that the higher modulus ratio of components, higher diameter ratio of components and the lower initial wrapping angle will result in a higher maximum NPR, which were −8.23, −8.16 through the main lateral directions of samples. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]