Frost Heave due to Ice Lens Formation in Freezing Soils

Abstract

A frost heave model which simulates formation of ice lenses is developed for saturated salt-free soils. Quasi-steady state heat and mass flow is considered. Special attention is paid to the transmitted zone, i.e. the frozen fringe. The permeability of the frozen fringe is assumed to vary exponentially as a function of temperature. The rates of water flow in the frozen fringe and in the unfrozen soil are assumed to be constant in space but vary with time. The pore water pressure in the frozen fringe is integrated from the Darcy law. The ice pressure in the frozen fringe is determined by the generalized Clapeyron equation. A new ice lens is assumed to form in the frozen fringe when and where the effective stress approaches zero. The neutral stress is determined as a simple function of the unfrozen water content and porosity. The model is implemented on an personal computer. The simulated heave amounts and heaving rates are compared with experimental data, which shows that the model generally gives reasonable estimation.

Discussion of the applicability of the generalized Clausius–Clapeyron equation and the frozen fringe process

“…The potential driving forces include the pore water pressure (Eigenbrod et al, 1996;Hazirbaba et al, 2011), ice pressure (O'Neil andMiller, 1985;Nixon, 1991), pore pressure (Sheng et al, 1995a(Sheng et al, , 1995bZhou and Li, 2012) and ice-water pressure difference (Dash et al, 1995;Dash et al, 2006). The pore water pressure quickly increases to the magnitude of the external load before ice nucleation when the freezing rate is higher during closed-system soil freezing (Eigenbrod et al, 1996).…”

“…Therefore, the majority of previous frost heave models have been static, including the hydraulic model (Harlan, 1973), the rigid ice model (Sheng et al, 1995a(Sheng et al, , 1995b and the segregation potential theory (Konrad and Morgenstem, 1980). The soil freezing process has been assumed to be quasi-static in the static model.…”

“…Potential space and paths in phase change during freezing. was determined by integrating from Darcy's law in the model of Sheng et al (1995aSheng et al ( , 1995b.…”

“…Li et al (2001) suggested that the GCCE is valid under static conditions where the pressure and temperature remain constant over time. To date, many theories and models for frost heave have been proposed on the basis of the GCCE, including the hydraulic model (Harlan, 1973), the rigid ice model (Sheng et al, 1995a(Sheng et al, , 1995b and the segregation potential theory (Konrad and Morgenstem, 1980). Therefore, the GCCE has a wide range of applications in numerous engineering constructions.…”

Coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical model for porous materials under frost action: theory and implementation

“…Questions raised from practice include the prediction of frost heave, the moisture and temperature redistribution, etc. Studies for addressing these issues usually led to TH or THM models, which can be categorized as rigid-ice models [35,45,54], thermodynamic models [22-24, 27, 28, 40, 42, 43], semi-empirical models [29,41], and poromechanical models [13,14].…”