Abstract: The shape, size, and distribution of the pore spaces in soil are critical elements of soil’s structural composition, and they play principal roles in governing the overall engineering behavior of the bulk soil mass. The pore characteristics of reticulated red clay including the shape of the pore, specific surface area, pore volume, distribution of pore diameter, and fractal characteristic was analyzed by automatic specific surface area analyzer based on gas absorption method in this paper. The results reveal that reticulated red clay is consisted of plate-shaped minerals, and the pore is slit-shaped; the specific surface area of reticulated red clay is 20.9 m²/g, which indicate that the clay minerals it contained was mainly kaolin; the total pore volume with pore diameter less than 3 150  is largely composed of mesopore and megalopore with diameter ranging from 27  to 1 958 . The distribution curve of pore diameter demonstrated that the optimal size of pore diameter are 41,130,180, 350 ,and the average pore diameter is 1 414 .The pore distribution of reticulated red clay has fractal characteristic, and the fractional dimension is 2.7 and 2.8.

Key words: reticulated red clay, specific surface area, pore, fractal