• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.34 no.11
• /
• pp.43-55
• /
• 2018

AGF (Artificial Ground Freezing) method is a temporary ground improvement method which can apply to all types of soil with the purpose of high stiffness and low hydraulic conductivity. However, the groundwater flow and the heterogeneity of the ground increase the uncertainty of the ice-column formation which hinders the reliability of this method. The effects of groundwater flow and layered heterogeneity on ice-wall integrity by AGF method were analyzed using finite element analysis program for a coupled thermo-hydro phenomena in the freezing ground. Groundwater flow changes circular ice-column into elliptical shapes and increases the time required for the formation of ice walls. The previous theoretical formula overestimated the completion time of the ice wall and the critical groundwater velocity by neglecting the thermal interaction between adjacent ice-columns. Numerical results presented the corrected formula and verified the proposed equation for the dimensionless ice-wall completion time. In the layered heterogeneous ground, the thickness of the layer with higher hydraulic conductivity and its relative magnitude were found to be important factors in the ice-wall completion time and critical velocity.