• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.393-399
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• 2022

The Segregation Potential (SP) is one of the most widely used predictors of frost heave in cold regions. Laboratory step-freezing tests determining a representative SP at the onset of the formation of the last ice lens (near the thermal steady state condition) can predict susceptibility to frost heave. Previous work has proposed empirical semi-log fitting for determination of the representative SP and applied it to several fine-grained soils, but considering only frost-susceptible soils. The presence of fines in coarse-grained soil affects frost susceptibility. Therefore, it is required to evaluate the applicability of the empirical semi-log fitting for both frost-susceptible and non-frost-susceptible soils with fines content. This paper reports laboratory frost heave tests for fines contents of 5%-70%. The frost susceptibility of soil mixtures composed of sand and silt was classified by the representative SP, and the suitability of the empirical semi-log fitting method was assessed. Combining semi-log fitting with simple laboratory frost heave testing using a temperature-controllable cell is shown to be suitable for both frost-susceptible and non-frost-susceptible soils. In addition, initially non-frost-susceptible soil became frost susceptible at a 10%-20% weight fraction of fines. This threshold fines content matched well with transitions in the engineering characteristics of both the unfrozen and frozen soil mixtures.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.10
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• pp.27-40
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• 2021

The construction method to prevent the frost heave or thaw settlement is called the ground stabilization method, and the thermo-syphon is one of the typical ground stabilization methods. The thermo-syphon has recently been developed with a simple analysis model and thermal analysis has been carried out, but the frost heave of frost susceptible soil was not considered. This study was conducted using ABAQUS internal user subroutine to develop the numerical analysis model (Coupled thermo-mechanical) that can simultaneously perform thermal analysis for the temperature change of the soil according to the thermo-syphon and structural analysis to predict the frost heave of the soil accordingly. As a result of the numerical analysis, the frost heave of the soil decreased as the performance of the thermo-syphon increased. As for the main results, when the thermo-syphon which has contain 25%, 50%, and 100% of refrigerant filling ratio was applied, the reduction ratio of the frost heave was 5.5%, 14.4%, and 21% respectively.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.24 no.9
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• pp.41-46
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• 2023

Numerical analysis of frost heave is challenging due to the influence of soil and environmental factors. Thermo-hydromechanical coupled analysis relies heavily on excessive input variables and primarily focuses on validating clayey soils, so it is limited to frost susceptible silty soils. An empirical approach based on thermodynamics offers relatively simple frost heave analysis and the advantage of linking constitutive equations with frost heave to enable geomechanical interpretations. In this paper, we introduce an empirical numerical model using the Segregation Potential (SP) and evaluate reliability through comparative analysis with experimental results of frost susceptible silty soils. While the SP model enables frost heave analysis for the given silty soils, further investigation on various silty soils is necessary to gather data on key input variables.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.03a
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• pp.475-482
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• 2005

Many public facilities including roadway, railway, and embedded pipe lines in this country have been damaged by the repeated freezing and thawing of the soil during winter and spring every year. However, there are only few research results in field of frozen ground in this country. Also, there are no the formulation of the reasonable equation for frost penetration depths and of the criterion for identifing potentially frost-susceptible soil in design manual of pavement yet. Through this study it is anticipated to asses the frost action problem in roadway, railway, and water suppply lines and to establish the design criterion about pavement in seasonal cold region.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.153-159
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• 2014

During the winter and spring seasons in Korea, structures such as buried water supply pipelines, roads, railways are frequently damaged due to frost heaving and thawing. Until now, the method of substituting the frost susceptible soil with the gravel or rubbles those are non-frost susceptible materials have been employed in Korea to prevent frost heaving. A series of laboratory soil tests and indoor frozen soil engineering experiments, as well as laboratory frost heaving tests were conducted for seeking the means of utilizing recycled PET bottles as substitute material.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.47-56
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• 2013

PURPOSES: This study is to evaluate a ground water level effect on frost heaving in road pavements. METHODS: The effects of water table on frost heaving in pavement systems were evaluated from the mechanical analysis using FROST program. The input parameters and boundary conditions were determined by considering climates, pavement sections, and material properties specially subgrade soil types in Korea. RESULTS: When the water table located above the freezing depth, amount of frost heaving caused by freezing the water in pavement itself was big enough to damage in pavement system, although pavement system consists of fully non-frost-susceptible materials with sufficient thickness of anti-freezing layer. The amount of frost heaving was decreased rapidly with increasing the distance between the water table and freezing depth. CONCLUSIONS: It was concluded that there is no engineering problems related with frost heaving in practical sense when the distance between freezing depth and water table is over 1.5m for having subgrade soils less than 50% of #200 sieve passing to meet specification on quality control in Korea.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.1
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• pp.5-15
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• 2021

The areas consisting of frost susceptible soils in cold regions, such as the Arctic area, have problems of frost heave and thaw settlement due to the seasonal air temperature changes and internal temperature of installed structures. Ground stabilization methods for preventing frost heave and thaw settlement of frost susceptible soils include trenching, backfilling and thermo-syphon. The thermo-syphon is the method in which refrigerant can control the ground temperature by transferring the ground temperature to atmosphere in the from of two-phase flow through the heat circulation of the internal refrigerant. This numerical study applied the function of these thermo-syphon as the boundary condition through user-subroutine coding inside ABAQUS and compared and analyzed the temperature results of laboratory experiments.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.8
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• pp.49-60
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• 2020

A fully coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model is established to evaluate frost heave behaviour of saturated frost-susceptible soils. The method is based on mass conservation, energy conservation, and force equilibrium equations, which are fully coupled with each other. These equations consider various physical phenomena during one-dimensional soil freezing such as latent heat of phase change, thermal conductivity changes, pore water migration, and the accompanying mechanical deformation. Using the thermo-hydro-mechanical model, a sensitivity analysis study is conducted to examine the effects of the geotechnical parameters and external conditions on the amount of frost heave and frost heaving rate. According to the results of the sensitivity analysis, initial void ratio significantly affects each objective as an individual parameter, whereas soil particle thermal conductivity and temperature gradient affect frost heave behaviour to a greater degree when applied simultaneously. The factors considered in this study are the main factors affecting the frost heaving amount and rate, which may be used to determine the frostbite sensitivity of a new sample.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.13 no.1
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• pp.173-178
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• 1993

The most appropriate mixing ratio of fly ash to bottom ash obtained from compaction characteristics and CBR values is varying from 5:5 to 6:4. But these mixed ashes are frost-susceptible materials according to judging by the paticle-size distribution because of a lot of silty-size paticles. In this study, the frost-susceptibility of compacted coal ash with proper mixing ratio is examined experimentally for use of subgrade materials. And, the efforts have been made to find proper cement addition in making these mixed ashes frost-insusceptible. It was revealed that these mixed ashes are frost-susceptible, and 4% of cement content is required to be made frost-insusceptable. It was found that amount of frost heave of these mixed ashes decreases with the unconfined compressive strength, and increases with log k if the permeability coefficient k is as low as the water into the freezing front of these mixed ashes is restricted.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.9
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• pp.19-27
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• 2009

In order to investigate anti-freeze process of precast concrete L-type retaining walls in cold regions, test walls were installed in the campus of Kitami Institute of Technology (KIT, Hokkaido, Japan). The wall consists of following three sections, i) back filled with frost susceptible clay soil, ii) using thermal insulation material, and back filled with frost susceptible soil, iii) back filled with frost-unsusceptible soil. The freezing front distribution and ground temperature within the backfill were observed and deflections of the walls were measured over three freeze-thaw seasons. Some understanding of the mechanisms of the build-up of frost heave pressure was gained, and the effectiveness of replacement method was observed. A simulation was performed to predict the shape of the freezing front in the backfill behind L-type walls with various cross sections. These findings were employed to propose a method for determining the appropriate zone to be replaced with frost unsusceptible backfill material in cold regions.