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Due to the periodic changes of climate, cracks are widely developed in expansive soils, leading to the destruction of soil integrity, the deterioration of physical strength, and eventually the instability of the expansive soil slope and other disasters. In this paper, a deep learning-based modeling method was proposed for soil crack networks characterization through steps of segmentation, quantification and simulation. Inspired by the U-Net convolutional neural network, a dilated convolution module was added to the backbone to enhance the crack segmentation capability and a subpixel edge detection algorithm was followed for accurate crack edge detection. Then, a deterministic or stochastic method was designed for crack network simulation. A case study of an expansive soil slope on the bank of Wadong Main Canal in the Pi-Shi-Hang Irrigation District, China, was conducted. Results show that the dilated U-Net model gained 0.24 and 0.25 improvement in F1-score and IoU (Intersection over Union) comparing to the conventional segmentation method (Otsu) and crack edge precision was further improved by 5.38%. The performances of proposed method including the image labeling, effect of crack thickness and environmental conditions, etc., are also explored. To validate the simulated crack network, crack areas at different depths were measured through X-ray images. Comparing with the simulation result, mean error rate of 1.05% was achieved. Thus, the proposed method can efficiently characterize soil crack networks using the field acquired crack images. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]