• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.153-159
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• 2014

During the winter and spring seasons in Korea, structures such as buried water supply pipelines, roads, railways are frequently damaged due to frost heaving and thawing. Until now, the method of substituting the frost susceptible soil with the gravel or rubbles those are non-frost susceptible materials have been employed in Korea to prevent frost heaving. A series of laboratory soil tests and indoor frozen soil engineering experiments, as well as laboratory frost heaving tests were conducted for seeking the means of utilizing recycled PET bottles as substitute material.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.17-26
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• 2016

Characteristic behaviors of geo-structure during freezing and thawing process have to be understood based on fundamental knowledge on phase change in porous soil and interaction between soil and structure. Inversion analysis using published one-dimensional soil freezing tests was conducted to suggest a mechanical model to consider an effect of the ice saturation on Young's modulus. Silty soil was more sensitive to temperature than weathered granite soil and sand, and weathered granite soil was more affected by initial water saturation in stiffness decrease than silty soil. Numerical simulations on chilled gas pipeline showed that shielding effect from surrounding frozen zone around the pipe decreases impact from external load onto the pipe. And a pipe installed in sand backfill showed more heaving due to relatively low stiffness of sand during freezing than that of surrounding in-situ weather granite soil. However, it had more stable stress condition due to effective stress redistribution from external load.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.225-245
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• 2016

Settlement of foundations in permafrost regions primarily results from three physical and mechanical processes such as thaw consolidation of permafrost layer, creep of warm frozen soils and the additional deformation of seasonal active layer induced by freeze-thaw cycling. This paper firstly establishes theoretical models for the three sources of settlement including a statistical damage model for soils which experience cyclic freeze-thaw, a large strain thaw consolidation theory incorporating a modified Richards' equation and a Drucker-Prager yield criterion, as well as a simple rheological element based creep model for frozen soils. A novel numerical method was proposed for live computation of thaw consolidation, creep and freeze-thaw cycling in corresponding domains which vary with heat budget in frozen ground. It was then numerically implemented in the FISH language on the FLAC platform and verified by freeze-thaw tests on sandy clay. Results indicate that the calculated results agree well with the measured data. Finally a model test carried out on a half embankment in laboratory was modeled.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.19-28
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• 2020

The spatial variability of geotechnical properties can lead to the uncertainty of settlement for frozen soil foundation around the oil pipeline, and it can affect the stability of permafrost foundation. In this paper, the elastic modulus, cohesion, angle of internal friction and poisson ratio are taken as four independent random fields. A stochastic analysis model for the uncertain settlement characteristic of frozen soil foundation around an oil pipeline is presented. The accuracy of the stochastic analysis model is verified by measured data. Considering the different combinations for the coefficient of variation and scale of fluctuation, the influences of spatial variability of geotechnical properties on uncertain settlement are estimated. The results show that the stochastic effects between elastic modulus, cohesion, angle of internal friction and poisson ratio are obviously different. The deformation parameters have a greater influence on stochastic settlement than the strength parameters. The overall variability of settlement reduces with the increase of horizontal scale of fluctuation and vertical scale of fluctuation. These results can improve our understanding of the influences of spatial variability of geotechnical properties on uncertain settlement and provide a theoretical basis for the reliability analysis of pipeline engineering in permafrost regions.

• Journal of Korean Society for Atmospheric Environment
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• v.28 no.1
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• pp.1-11
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• 2012

A case study was conducted for a severe wintertime dust event that occurred on December 29, 2007 in Korea. Three different dust emission schemes, namely, those of Marticorena and Bergametti (1995), Lu and Shao (1999), and Shao (2004) (hereinafter, referred to MB, LS, and S04 schemes, respectively) were implemented in Weather Research Forecast with Chemistry (WRF/Chem) to assess their performance in simulating wintertime Asian dust events. WRF/Chem simulation reproduces dust emission over Mongolia on December 27 and 28, 2007 and the onset timing of the dust event in Korea well. There is, however, a huge difference among the estimated dust emission amounts for the three schemes; the dust concentration derived by MB scheme is 6 times larger than that from LS scheme. The three schemes overestimate dust concentrations when comparing to observed surface-level $PM_{10}$ mass concentrations in Ganghwa, Seoul, and Yeongwol. This discrepancy is thought to be mainly due to the overestimated model winds and the surface condition such as snow cover fraction, which did not adequately represent the real conditions. Considering frozen soil effect on dust emission, the model results are comparable with observation data: it is important to consider frozen soil in simulating wintertime dust events.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.12
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• pp.5-16
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• 2012

The second scientific antarctic station of South Korea is under construction at Terra Nova Bay located in eastern Antarctica. Ground condition in the Antarctica is frozen in general, but there are seasonal frozen grounds with active layers sporadically. When the active layer is frozen, frost heaving occurs that might cause the differential movement of frozen ground and the failure of structures. Therefore, it is necessary to determine the frost heaving susceptibility of soils at Terra Nova Bay before starting antarctic station construction. This study presents experimental investigation of the frost heaving susceptibility of soil samples with variation of particle sizes and unfrozen water contents. The soil samples were taken from five different locations at Terra Nova Bay and physical properties, unfrozen water content, and frost heaving tests were performed. For the frost heaving tests, soil specimens were frozen with constant freezing temperatures at the top and with drainage at the bottom in order to stimulate the frost heaving. The frost heaving tests provide volume expansion, volumetric strain, and heaving rate which can be used to analyze the relationship between the frost heaving vs. particle size and the frost heaving vs. unfrozen water content. Experimental results show that the more the fine contents exist in soils, the more frost heaving occurs. In addition, the frost heaving depends on unfrozen water content. Experimental data can be used to evaluate the frost heaving susceptibility of soils at the future construction site in the Antarctica.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.10
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• pp.25-32
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• 2012

The application of electrical resistivity, which is related to charge mobility, has increased in the field of geotechnical engineering for the detection of underground cavern, faults and subsurface pollution level. The purpose of this study is to investigate the variation of electrical resistivity due to temperature change. Sand-silt mixture specimens prepared in the square freezing nylon cell are frozen in the frozen chamber. Four electrodes are attached on the four side walls of the freezing cell for the measurement of electrical resistance during temperature change. Electrical resistances of sand-silt mixtures with different degrees of saturation (0%, 2.5%, 5%, 10%, 20%, 40%, 60% and 100%) are measured as the temperature of specimens decrease from $20^{\circ}C$ to $-10^{\circ}C$. The electrical resistances determined by Ohm's law are transformed into the electrical resistivity by calibration. Experimental results show that the higher degree of saturation, the lower electrical resistivity at $20^{\circ}C$. Electrical resistivity gradually increases as the temperature decrease from $20^{\circ}C$ to $0^{\circ}C$. For the specimens with the degree of saturation of 15% or higer, electrical resistivity dramatically changes near the temperature of $0^{\circ}C$. In addition, very high electrical resistivity is observed regardless of the degree of saturation if the specimens are frozen. This study provides the fundamental information of electrical resistivity according to the soil freezing and temperature change demonstrates that electrical resistivity be a practical method for frozen soil investigation.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.13 no.4
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• pp.45-56
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• 2014

Frozen ground in cold region consists of an upper active layer and lower permafrost which is permanently frozen land. During the summer season, the air temperature is high enough to make the frozen ground melt, which causes the reduction of soil strength and thaw settlement. These phenomena result in structural instability, so it is necessary to apply frozen ground stability techniques. Thermosyphon is a closed natural two-phase convection device to maintain the ground temperature below $0^{\circ}C$ by extracting heat from the ground and discharges it into the atmosphere. Experimental and numerical investigation has been performed to estimate the effect of the refrigerant filling ratio in thermosyphon using R-134a refrigerant and the thermal conductance of the thermosyphon.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2002.03a
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• pp.329-336
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• 2002

The earth structures and in-ground LNG tank, and buildings can be constructed with using artificial freezing method on the reclaimed land. In this study, upon freezing a saturated soil in a closed-system from the top, a considerable pressure was developed. The pressure is the result of the surface energy of a curved ice-water interface. The most significant of these parameters will have the greatest effect on the classification. In order to establish frost-susceptibility criteria based on frost heaving expansion pressure, more soils have to be tested. This study was initiated to investigate the soils frost heaving expansion pressure and moisture characteristics resulting from freezing and freezing-thawing cycle process. Weathered granite soils, sandy soil, sandy soil were used in the laboratory freezing test subjected to thermal gradients under closed- systems.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.27 no.5
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• pp.433-445
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• 2021

Artificial ground freezing (AGF) is a commonly used geotechnical support technique that can be applied in any soil type and has low environmental impact. Experimental and numerical investigations have been conducted to optimize AGF for application in diverse scenarios. Precise simulation of groundwater flow is crucial to improving the reliability these investigations' results. Previous experimental research has mostly considered horizontal seepage flow, which does not allow accurate calculation of the groundwater flow velocity due to spatial variation of the piezometric head. This study adopted vertical seepage flow-which can maintain a constant cross-sectional area-to eliminate the limitations of using horizontal seepage flow. The closure time is a measure of the time taken for an impermeable layer to begin to form, this being the time for a frozen soil-ice wall to start forming adjacent to the freeze pipes; this is of great importance to applied AGF. This study reports verification of the reliability of our experimental apparatus and measurement system using only water, because temperature data could be measured while freezing was observed visually. Subsequent experimental AFG tests with saturated sandy soil were also performed. From the experimental results, a method of estimating closure time is proposed using the inflection point in the thermal conductivity difference between pore water and pore ice. It is expected that this estimation method will be highly applicable in the field. A further parametric study assessed factors influencing the closure time using a two-dimensional coupled thermo-hydraulic numerical analysis model that can simulate the AGF of saturated sandy soil considering groundwater flow. It shows that the closure time is affected by factors such as hydraulic gradient, unfrozen permeability, particle thermal conductivity, and freezing temperature. Among these factors, changes in the unfrozen permeability and particle thermal conductivity have less effect on the formation of frozen soil-ice walls when the freezing temperature is sufficiently low.