Abstract:

China has a large area with seasonally and perennially frozen soils. It is necessary to study mechanical properties of frozen soils for the sake of constructions in cold regions, so as to guarantee their stability. In this paper, the distribution of frozen soils in China and the main features of frozen soils differing from unfrozen soils, are briefly described firstly. Generally speaking, frozen soil mechanics consists of two main aspects, i.e. freeze-thaw related problems and mechanical properties of the already-frozen soils. Frost heave, thaw settlement and freeze-thaw induced changes in mechanical properties are freeze-thaw related problems. Frost heave has been extensively studied. Various theories have been put forward to describe the mechanism of ice segregation which is considered as the main cause of frost heave; and some theories have even been applied to quantitative analysis. The study of thaw settlement has a long history, while most of the previous studies still stay in empirical stage. Thaw consolidation has been studied; but it has considerable limitations so far. Therefore, we suggest that the artificial neural network could be used to improve the precision and applicability in estimating thaw settlement on the one side, large strain theory could be used to improve thaw consolidation theory. For the already-frozen soils, this paper summarizes the previous studies on strength, stress-strain relationship and dynamic properties. Study of the strength of frozen soil borrows strength theories for unfrozen soils; however, they can hardly reflect stress melting of frozen soils under high stresses. The previous studies of stress-strain relationship of frozen soils have been focusing on creep; and the empirical relationship directly obtained from testing data is the mainstream. Influence of temperature on dynamic parameters of frozen soils seems to be the only task in frozen soil dynamics for a long time; while influence of frozen layer in dynamic response of a site has attracted attentions in recent years. At last, physico-mechanical processes involved in deformation of constructions in permafrost regions are briefly analyzed.

Key words: frozen soil, mechanical properties, freeze-thaw, state-of-art