Microscopic and mechanical properties of undistributed and remoulded red clay from Guiyang, China

Unconsolidated-undrained (UU) tests were conducted to investigate the mechanical and morphological properties of undisturbed and remoulded red clay, with the microscopic characteristics determined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The microanalysis showed that the red clay aggregate was granular, curved-slice and thin layered and flower-shaped ellipsoid, with X and Y-type cracks and pores in the undisturbed red clay. Moreover, the contact modes of red clay aggregates were point contact, line contact, surface contact and mosaic contact. In addition, the main microstructure red clay was flocculation, honeycomb and pseudosphere structures. The pores in undisturbed soil were arranged in one direction, with no obvious directionality in remoulded red clay. The pore area, perimeter and maximum length of undisturbed red clay were smaller than those of remoulded red clay, with a larger probability entropy, probability distribution index and fractal dimension of pore distribution of undisturbed red clay than remoulded red clay. UU tests showed that the shear strength of undisturbed red clay was higher than that of remoulded red clay.

THE EXCEPTIONAL E8 GEOMETRY OF CLIFFORD (16) SUPERSPACE AND CONFORMAL GRAVITY YANG–MILLS GRAND UNIFICATION

We continue to study the Chern–Simons E8 Gauge theory of Gravity developed by the author which is a unified field theory (at the Planck scale) of a Lanczos–Lovelock Gravitational theory with a E8 Generalized Yang–Mills (GYM) field theory, and is defined in the 15D boundary of a 16D bulk space. The Exceptional E8 Geometry of the 256-dim slice of the 256 × 256-dimensional flat Clifford (16) space is explicitly constructed based on a spin connection [Formula: see text], that gauges the generalized Lorentz transformations in the tangent space of the 256-dim curved slice, and the 256 × 256 components of the vielbein field [Formula: see text], that gauge the nonabelian translations. Thus, in one-scoop, the vielbein [Formula: see text] encodes all of the 248 (nonabelian) E8 generators and 8 additional (abelian) translations associated with the vectorial parts of the generators of the diagonal subalgebra [Cl(8) ⊗ Cl(8)] diag ⊂ Cl(16). The generalized curvature, Ricci tensor, Ricci scalar, torsion, torsion vector and the Einstein–Hilbert–Cartan action is constructed. A preliminary analysis of how to construct a Clifford Superspace (that is far richer than ordinary superspace) based on orthogonal and symplectic Clifford algebras is presented. Finally, it is shown how an E8 ordinary Yang–Mills in 8D, after a sequence of symmetry breaking processes E8 → E7 → E6 → SO(8, 2), and performing a Kaluza–Klein–Batakis compactification on CP2, involving a nontrivial torsion, leads to a (Conformal) Gravity and Yang–Mills theory based on the Standard Model in 4D. The conclusion is devoted to explaining how Conformal (super) Gravity and (super) Yang–Mills theory in any dimension can be embedded into a (super) Clifford-algebra-valued gauge field theory.