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Soft, fine-grained soils were exposed to cyclic one-dimensional, open-system freezing and thawing, resulting in maximum volume changes of up to 30%, depending on the initial moisture content and plasticity of the clay as well as on the rate of freezing. A linear relationship between the net volume changes subsequent to freezing and thawing and the liquidity index prior to freezing and thawing was obtained. This correlation is not unique, but depends on rate and mode of freezing. Thus, settlements from freeze–thaw consolidation in the field can be predicted from such tests if the rate and mode of freezing are the same as in the field. During cyclic freezing and thawing the soils became fissured and jointed, resulting for most clays in large increases in their bulk permeabilities, which increased with an increasing number of freeze–thaw cycles, often by more than two orders of magnitude. For some materials, however, little change in permeability occured. Key words: cyclic freeze–thaw, clays, freeze–thaw consolidation, permeability, volume changes.

A unique mechanism based on extensive field and laboratory studies is presented to account for certain premature failures of flexible pavements in cold areas like those in Scandinavia and in northern parts of Canada and the United States. Water condensing at the interface between pavement and granular base accumulates at subzero temperatures resulting in excess moisture in this zone. During the thaw period of the uppermost base layer, the excess water in the aggregate is trapped between impervious layers of frozen ground to the sides and below as well as an impervious layer of asphalt pavement above. Because of this containment, high pore water pressures can occur, leading to loss in shear strength of the base material and thus to failure of the pavement structure itself. It was found that under special conditions, excess moisture can accumulate in granular base with a silt content greater than 20 percent and very high pore water pressures can develop during initial thaw at the pavement-soil interface. With silt contents of less than 2 percent, excess pore water pressures can be avoided during thaw. It was also shown that when a clean open gravel is placed below the pavement on top of a silty base material, moisture accumulation near the pavement-base interface can be prevented, and thus also the development of high pore water pressures.

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During driving of steel piles through soft, sensitive clay into very dense sand and gravel, pore-water pressure responses were monitored. As a result of the large length of the piles and also because of the high sensitivity of the soft clays, the piles were driven in two stages. During the initial stage of driving in the soft clay, only very small pore-water pressure increases were recorded together with very low pile driving resistances; however, during the second stage of driving, high pore-water pressure increases were observed in the clay as soon as the piles penetrated into the underlying very dense sand and gravel. It was concluded that the clay deposit was loaded from below, as the piles were driven into very dense sand. The total stress changes and the resulting pore-water pressure changes in the clay were analyzed, assuming that the pile driving load was equivalent to a flexible load acting on the surface of an elastic half-space, which represents the soft clay deposit. This interpretation of the pore-water pressure increases is important for the assessment of the bearing capacity of engineering structures affected by piles driven through soft soils into very dense deposits. The potential for high pore-water pressure increases in the clay during undrained loading as well as for volume increases in the dense sand due to pile driving can be predicted from piezocone test data. Key words: pile driving, pore-water pressure, piezocone testing, soft sensitive clays, dense sand deposits.