Sixteenth Canadian Geotechnical Colloquium: Frost heave in soils: concepts and engineering

Frost heave in soils is analysed from a fundamental point of view to predict the development of periodic ice lens formation that is observed in frozen soils. A model of simultaneous heat and mass transfer associated with three new concepts is described and was found to exhibit many of the frost heave features observed in laboratory tests. An efficient frost heave parameter termed the segregation potential, SP, is also described and found to be an adequate input to a general formulation of heat and mass transfer for the prediction of frost heave in soils for both laboratory and field conditions. Representative values of SP depend on the stress and thermal histories of the soil deposit. The SP-based approach can be used for solving two-dimensional frost heave problems and yields stress, temperature, and ice-content distributions with time. Key words : frost heave, soils, segregation potential, simulation, thermodynamics.