Abstract: The main inducement to freeze-thaw damage of engineering rock mass is the frost heave and thawing shrinkage of moisture in rock, which is quite common in cold regions. The research on freezing rock can be mainly concluded to four parts, which are the physico-mechanical properties of freezing rock, phase transition process, the thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) coupling at low temperature, the model of freeze-thaw damage and numerical simulation. During the last several decades, researchers have put efforts on freezing rock by theory analysis, numerical simulation, field test and laboratory experiments. Although remarkable achievements have been obtained, there is still long way to go in the field of freezing rock and plenty of researches have stayed in the stage of experiment. Research on frost damage of rock should base on microscale and take the water-ice phase transition as entry point. Furthermore the relationship between freeze-thaw action and crack propagation should be investigated, and extend to the influence of freeze-thaw action on the whole fracture network of rock mass.

Key words: fractured rock mass, freeze-thaw damage, thermo-hydro-mechanical coupling at low temperature, hydraulic and heat transport, phase transition