Coupled phenomena induced by freezing in a granular material

Abstract

Artificial Ground Freezing (AGF) is a controllable process that can be used by engineers to stabilise temporarily the ground, provide structural support and/or exclude groundwater from an excavation until construction of the final lining provides permanent stability and water tightness. AGF is often carried out based on an observational approach, while a full understanding of the freezing process and of the generation of freezing-induced heave and settlements is still far from being achieved. In this work, the process of ground freezing is studied using a constitutive model that encompasses frozen and unfrozen behaviour within a unified effective-stress-based framework and employs a combination of ice pressure, liquid water pressure and total stress as state variables. The parameters of the constitutive model are calibrated against experimental data obtained from samples retrieved during construction of Napoli underground, in which AGF was extensively used to excavate in granular soils and weak fractured rock below the ground water table.