• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2016

In this paper, the liquid air was selected as the refrigerant in artificial ground freezing to be used for rapid ground freezing and to reduce the risk of suffocation and the applicability of liquid air was verified. In order to evaluate the stability of the liquid air, the oxygen concentration of mixtures with liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen was experimentally examined to meet the oxygen concentration criteria in the Occupational Safety and Health Act. In addition, the effects of the mixture ratio of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen, pressure and flow rate change in the storage vessel on the oxygen concentration in the liquid air were investigated. As a result, the ratio of liquid nitrogen and liquid oxygen 8: 2 was shown to meet the oxygen concentration standards. Pressure and flow rate change in the storage vessel did not have significant effects on the oxygen concentration in the liquid air.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.401-412
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• 2016

It is extremely difficult to apply conventional grouting methods to subsea tunnelling construction in the high water pressure condition. In such a condition, the rapid artificial freezing method can be an alternative to grouting to form a watertight zone around freezing pipes. For a proper design of the artificial freezing method, the influence of salinity on the freezing process has to be considered. However, there are few domestic tunnel construction that adopted the artificial freezing method, and influential factors on the freezing of the soil are not clearly identified. In this paper, a series of laboratory experiments were performed to identify the physical characteristics of frozen soil. Thermal conductivity of the frozen and unfrozen soil samples was measured through the thermal sensor adopting transient hot-wire method. Moreover, a lab-scale freezing chamber was devised to simulate freezing process of silica sand with consideration of the salinity of pore-water. The temperature in the silica sand sample was measured during the freezing process to evaluate the effect of pore-water salinity on the frozen rate that is one of the key parameters in designing the artificial freezing method in subsea tunnelling. In case of unfrozen soil, the soil samples saturated with fresh water (salinity of 0%) and brine water (salinity of 3.5%) showed a similar value of thermal conductivity. However, the frozen soil sample saturated with brine water led to the thermal conductivity notably higher than that of fresh water, which corresponds to the fact that the freezing rate of brine water was greater than that of fresh water in the freezing chamber test.