• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.22 no.2
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• pp.42-49
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• 2008

Recently many countries have become interested in the development of cold or arctic regions. The construction of engineered structures in those regions demands an understanding of the deformation characteristics of frozen soil. However, an understanding of frozen soil behavior poses difficult problems owing to the complex interaction between the soil particles and the ice matrix. In this research, a series of laboratory tests was performed to investigate the variations in the unconfined compression strength and split tensile strength of weathered granite soil and mixed soil (standard sand and kaolinite) in 15 degrees below zero environments. In the frozen soil tests, specimens were prepared with various water and clay contents, and then the interrelationships between four factors (water content, clay content, unconfined compression strength, split tensile strength) were analyzed. The test results were summarized as follows; as the water content was increased, the unconfined compressive and split tensile strengths also increased in frozen soil. However as the clay content was increased, the unconfined compressive and split tensile strengths were lowered. In the case of frozen soil that contained little clay content, the strength decreased rapidly in mixed soil (standard sand and kaolinite) when the frozen specimen was broken. On the other hand, in the cases of mixed soil that contained a high clay content and weathered granite soil, the strength decreased relatively slowly.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.145-156
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• 2024

The mechanical properties of the concrete-frozen soil interface play a significant role in the stability and service performance of construction projects in cold regions. Current research mainly focuses on the precast concrete-frozen soil interface, with limited consideration for the more realistic cast-in-place concrete-frozen soil interface. The two construction methods result in completely different contact surface morphologies and exhibit significant differences in mechanical properties. Therefore, this study selects silty clay as the research object and conducts direct shear tests on the concrete-frozen soil interface under conditions of initial water content ranging from 12% to 24%, normal stress from 50 kPa to 300 kPa, and freezing temperature of -3℃. The results indicate that (1) both interface shear stress-displacement curves can be divided into three stages: rapid growth of shear stress, softening of shear stress after peak, and residual stability; (2) the peak strength of both interfaces increases initially and then decreases with an increase in water content, while residual strength is relatively less affected by water content; (3) peak strength and residual strength are linearly positively correlated with normal stress, and the strength of ice bonding is less affected by normal stress; (4) the mechanical properties of the cast-in-place concrete-frozen soil interface are significantly better than those of the precast concrete-frozen soil interface. However, when the water content is high, the former's mechanical performance deteriorates much more than the latter, leading to severe strength loss. Therefore, in practical engineering, cast-in-place concrete construction is preferred in cases of higher negative temperatures and lower water content, while precast concrete construction is considered in cases of lower negative temperatures and higher water content. This study provides reference for the construction of frozen soil-structure interface in cold regions and basic data support for improving the stability and service performance of cold region engineering.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.97-109
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• 2019

Physical conditions play vital role on the mechanical properties of frozen soil, especially for the temperature and moisture content of frozen soil. Subsequently, they influence the subsidence and stress law of permafrost layer. Taking Jiangcang No. 1 Coal Mine as engineering background, combined with laboratory experiment, field measurements and empirical formula to obtain the mechanical parameters of frozen soil, the thick plate mechanical model of permafrost was established to evaluate the safety of permafrost roof. At the same time, $FLAC^{3D}$ was used to study the influence of temperature and moisture content on the deformation and stress law of frozen soil layer. The results show that the failure tensile stress of frozen soil is larger than the maximum tensile stress of permafrost roof occurring in the process of mining. It indicates that the permafrost roof cannot collapse under the conditions of moisture content in the range from 20% to 27% as well as temperature in the range from $-35^{\circ}C$ to $-15^{\circ}C$. Moreover, the maximum subsidence of the upper and lower boundary of the overlying permafrost layer decreases with the increase of moisture content in the range of 15% to 27% or the decrease of temperature in the range of $-35^{\circ}C$ to $-15^{\circ}C$ if the temperature or moisture content keeps consistent with $-25^{\circ}C$ or 20%, respectively.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.783-791
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• 2018

In consideration of the mesoscopic structure of soil-rock mixtures in which the rock aggregates are wrapped by soil at normal temperatures, a two-layer embedded model of single-inclusion composite material was built to calculate the shear modulus of soil-rock mixtures. At a freezing temperature, an interface ice interlayer was placed between the soil and rock interface in the mesoscopic structure of the soil-rock mixtures. Considering that, a three-layer embedded model of double-inclusion composite materials and a multi-step multiphase micromechanics model were then built to calculate the shear modulus of the frozen soil-rock mixtures. Given the effect of pore structure of soil-rock mixtures at normal temperatures, its shear modulus was also calculated by using of the three-layer embedded model. Experimental comparison showed that compared with the two-layer embedded model, the effect predicted by the three-layer embedded model of the soil-rock mixtures was better. The shear modulus of the soil-rock mixtures gradually increased with the increase in rock regardless of temperature, and the increment rate of the shear modulus increased rapidly particularly when the rock content ranged from 50% to 70%. The shear modulus of the frozen soil-rock mixtures was nearly 3.7 times higher than that of the soil-rock mixtures at a normal temperature.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.339-348
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• 2020

The uncertain geotechnical properties of frozen soil are important evidence for the design, operation and maintenance of the frozen ground. The complex geological, environmental and physical effects can lead to the spatial variations of the frozen soil, and the uncertain mechanical properties are the key factors for the uncertain analysis of frozen soil engineering. In this study, the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio of warm frozen soil were measured, and the statistical characteristics under different temperature conditions are obtained. The autocorrelation distance (ACD) and autocorrelation function (ACF) of uncertain mechanical properties are estimated by random field (RF) method. The results show that the mean elastic modulus and mean strength decrease with the increase of temperature while the mean Poisson ratio increases with the increase of temperature. The average values of the ACD for the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio are 0.64m, 0.53m and 0.48m, respectively. The standard deviation of the ACD for the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio are 0.03m, 0.07m and 0.03m, respectively. The ACFs of elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio decrease with the increase of ratio of local average distance and scale of fluctuation. The ACF of uncertain mechanical properties is different when the temperature is different. This study can improve our understanding of the spatial autocorrelation variations of uncertain geotechnical properties and provide a basis and reference for the uncertain settlement analysis of frozen soil foundation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.245-254
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• 2020

The interaction between the frozen soil and building structures deteriorates with the increasing temperature. A nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) stratification test was conducted with respect to the unfrozen water content on the interface and a shear test was conducted on the frozen soil-structure interface to explore the shear characteristics of the frozen soil-structure interface and its failure mechanism during the thawing process. The test results showed that the unfrozen water at the interface during the thawing process can be clearly distributed in three stages, i.e., freezing, phase transition, and thawing, and that the shear strength of the interface decreases as the unfrozen water content increases. The internal friction angle and cohesive force display a change law of "as one falls, the other rises," and the minimum internal friction angle and maximum cohesive force can be observed at -1℃. In addition, the change characteristics of the interface strength parameters during the freezing process were compared, and the differences between the interface shear characteristics and failure mechanisms during the frozen soil-structure interface freezing-thawing process were discussed. The shear strength parameters of the interface was subjected to different changes during the freezing-thawing process because of the different interaction mechanisms of the molecular structures of ice and water in case of the ice-water phase transition of the test sample during the freezing-thawing process.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.219-226
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• 2020

Unconfined compression test (UCT) is widely conducted in laboratories to evaluate the mechanical behavior of frozen soils. However, its results are sensitive to the initial conditions of sample creation by freezing as well as the end-surface conditions during loading of the specimen into the apparatus for testing. This work compared ice samples prepared by three-dimensional and one-dimensional freezing. The latter created more-homogenous ice samples containing fewer entrapped air bubbles or air nuclei, leading to relatively stable UCT results. Three end-surface conditions were compared for UCT on ice specimens made by one-dimensional freezing. Steel disc cap with embedded rubber was found most appropriate for UCT. Three frozen materials (ice, frozen sand, and frozen silt) showed different failure patterns, which were classified as brittle failure and ductile failure. Ice and frozen sand showed strain-softening, while frozen silt showed strain-hardening. Subsequent investigation considered the influence of fines content on the unconfined compression behavior of frozen soil mixtures with fines contents of 0-100%. The mixtures showed a brittle-to-ductile transition of failure patterns at 10%-20% fines content.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.13 no.5
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• pp.429-442
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• 2017

Dry bridges have been widely applied in the Qinghai-Tibet Railway (QTR) to minimize the thermal disturbance of engineering to the permafrost. However, because the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is an area with a high potential occurrence of earthquakes, seismic action can easily destroy the dry bridges. Therefore, a three-dimensional numerical model, with consideration of the soil-pile interactions, is established to investigate the thermal characteristics and their impact on the seismic response of the dry bridge in permafrost region along the QTR. The numerical results indicate that there exist significant differences in the lateral displacement, shear force, and bending moment of the piles in different thermal conditions under seismic action. When the active layer become from unfrozen to frozen state, the maximum displacement of the bridge pile reduces, and the locations of the zero and peak values of the shear force and bending moment also change. It is found that although the higher stiffness of frozen soil confines the lateral displacement of the pile, compared with unfrozen soil, it has an adverse effect on the earthquake energy dissipation capacity.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.28 no.5
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• pp.85-94
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• 2012

Recently, growing interests in frozen ground have stimulated us to advance fundamental theories and systematic researches on soil behavior under freezing conditions. Unlike the well-established soil mechanics theory, temperature variation and phase change of pore-water cause water migration to cold side, ground heaving, sharp increase in earth pressure, etc., which bring about serious problems in frozen geotechnical structures. Elasto-plastic mechanical constitutive model for frozen/unfrozen soil subjected to fully coupled THM phenomena is formulated based on a new stress variable that is continuous in frozen-unfrozen transitional regions. Numerical simulations are conducted to discuss numerical reliability and applicability of the developed constitutive model: one-dimensional heaving pressure, tri-axial compression test, and one-side freezing tests. The numerical results show that developed model can efficiently describe complex THM phenomena of frozen soil, and they can be utilized to analyze and design the geotechnical structures under freezing conditions, and predict their long-term behavior.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.281-290
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• 2022

The direct shear test is commonly used to evaluate the shear behavior of frozen soil-structure interfaces under normal stress. However, failure criteria, such as the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, are needed to obtain the unconfined shear strength. Hence, the punch shear test, which is usually used to estimate the shear strength of rocks without confinement, was examined in this study to directly determine the adfreezing strength. It is measured as the shear strength of the frozen soil-structure interface under unconfined conditions. Different soils of silica sand, field sand, and field clay were prepared inside the steel and concrete ring structures. Soil and ring structures were frozen at the target temperature for more than 24 h. A punch shear test was then conducted. The test results show that the adfreezing strength increased with a decrease in the target temperature and increase in the initial water content, owing to the increase in ice content. The adfreezing strength of field clay was the smallest when compared with the other soil specimens because of the large amount of unfrozen water content. The field sand with the larger normalized roughness showed greater adfreezing strength than the silica sand with a lower normalized roughness. From the experiment and analysis, the applicability of the punch shear test was examined to measure the adfreezing strength of the frozen soil-structure interface. To find a proper sample dimension, supplementary experiments or numerical analysis will be needed in further research.