: TRIG An.Introduction to Frozen Ground Engineering Orlando B. Andersland Michigan State University Branko Ladanyi \ Ecole Polytechnique of the Université de Montréal CHAPMAN & HALL, ICD)P_ An International Thomson Pubiishing Company [New York « Albany + Bonn * Boston + Cincinnat « Detiot « London + Madiid + Melboume * Mexico City Pasitic Grove + San Francisco * Singapare + Tokyo + Toronto « WashingtonEEE EO EEO | 146 Mechanical Properties of Frozen Sols sensitive to temperature and strain rate as compared to uniaxial compression tests under similar conditions (Haynes, Karalius, and Kalafut, 1975; Bragg and An- dersiand, 1982). An extensive series of uniaxial tensile tests om ice- saturated Fairbanks silt (Zhu and Carbee, 1984, 1987), with an average dry density of 1.26 Mg/m? and tem- perature of ~5°C can be summarized as follows: Below and up to the ductile-brittle transition point, which ‘occurred at a strain rate of about 107? s~!, there was a steady increase of both tensile strength and failure strain with increasing strain rate; beyond the transition point, the strength showed a slight decrease with i creasing strain rate. Comparison of uniaxial tensile and compression strengths with strain rate showed that they remained about the same up to the plastic~brittle transition point, beyond which the compression strength contin- ued to increase while the tensile strength started to decrease because of increasing brittleness of the soil at high strain rates. The failure strain in tension was found to be about one order of magnitude smaller than in compression, within the strain rates covered in the tests. The initial tangent modulus, E,, of the frozen silt at —5°C was observed to be relatively insensitive to strain rate, with its value varying between 900 and 1400 MPa. More recent information on the tensile behavior of a sandy silt, fine sand, and a gravelly sand, at temper- atures of ~1.1°C and ~6.7°C and strain rates between 10°? and 10S h-!, has been made available by Sayles (991), The peak strengths plotted in a log-log plot showed a linear increase with applied stress, indicating that the data could be represented by a power law creep equation, such as Eq. (5.3-38) or (5.3-48). Denot- ing the peak tensile strength by o, gives veal” (41) ‘The values of parameters m and oz (MPa) for & = 10-$ h' calculated from the data supplied by Sayles (1991) are given in Table 5-5. ‘Table 5-5. Uniaxial tensile strength parameters for various sols Dry Water density content Temperature g/m?) CC) Pa) 126 —«369=~=*«C= SSCA 1300 M9 67 ps 1s) 7-67 G37 RD 15 1926.7 SBT 178 192-4 .neD Source: After Sayles (1981. “after Zhu and Carbee 1987. Roe d= 10°F Wo 5.5 DEFORMABILITY OF FROZEN SOILS ‘The total deformation of a frozen soil under load is ‘composed of an instantaneous portion and a time-de- pendent portion, both of which contain a reversible and an irreversible component. The reversible component of instantaneous deformation determines the response of frozen soils to very short term and dynamic loading. In general, the values of deformation parameters, such as the Young's modulus, E, and Poisson's ratio, a, depend on the soil type, its temperature, and the type of test. Some data available in the literature on de- formability for short-term static loads and various frozen soils will be presented. Based on the results of cyclic compression tests on 200-mm cubes of three different frozen soils, Tsytovich (4975) found that under a pressure of 200 kPa, the variation of Young's modulus E with temperature could be represented by the following empirical equations Gohnston, 1981): 1. For frozen sand (with grain size mainly between 005 and 0.25 mm, and total moisture content of 17 10 19%) at temperatures down t0 ~ 10°C, E = 5001 + 4.20) 651) 2. For frozen silt (grain size mainly between 0.005 and 0.05 mm, and water content of 26 to 29%) at empera- tures down to =5°C, E = 40001 + 3.58) (552) 3. For frozen clay (grain size more than 50% below 0.005 mm and water content of 46 t0 56%) at temperatures down to —5°C, E = S001 + 0.468) 633) ‘where E is Young's modulus in MPa and 8 is the number of © below OFC. When these values of E are compared with those for ice obtained under similar conditions, it is observed that the modulus for ice is smaller than that of dense frozen sand and silt but is much larger than that of clay, due to the large amount of unfrozen water in the latter. Poisson's ratio for the three frozen soil types was found to decrease with decreasing temperatures until essentially all the pore water is frozen and soil becomes rigid. More recently, new experimental information about the deformability of various frozen soils under triaxial test conditions has become available. For example, Fig. 5-34a to c show the results of a great number of triaxialHe Mechanical Properies of Proson Soils, 147 10! TTT 18 yo 5710? 2 osraiote Pare, 3 ai x1o3 2 aiitot fe T § Fania fF ° L + Lito? 4S be tisto fe o htnt08 od 3 Stun so-® i 118-1 23 Mare? ei arl8-1.23 g/m? 3 4 2 z 210° 2 site z ef boat pou titily tot pote 10° 10! ‘o 10° 10" 8/6, . Temperature Factor €/8,, Temperature Factor @ © 108 eT § fF 4 ‘ 3 4, 1HO8= oman : srs ae 4 ; #.-; tao123 4 . 2 139014 é a i t : : 10 10? E, Applied Steam Rate 1s) © Figure $34, Deformation moduli for frozen sit, under various temperature, strainrate, and density concitions (a) inal tangent modulus versus temperature ratio for medium-density samples at various strain rates; (b) deformation modulus Eyp versus temperature ratio for medium-density samples at ‘various strain rates (€) deformation modulus Eyy versus stein rate for three different dry density ranges at ~2°C, (After Zhu and Carbee, 1964) ‘compression tests conducted on a frozen Fairbanks silt __Kuribayashi, Kawamura, and Yui (1985), based on uni- by Zhu and Carbee (1984). The data summarized in axial compression tests on frozen fine sand at tempera Fig. 5-34a and b show, for a silt with dry density varying tures between ~10 and ~30°C. The authors observed form 1.18 to 1.23 Mg/m’, the dependence of the initial _a very good correlation between the deformation mod- tangent modulus, Ey (at 50% of peak strength) on ulus £5 (at 1.5% uniaxial strain) and the uniaxial temperature for six different strain rates, while Fig. compression strength, g,, which can be expressed by 5-34 shows the variation of Ey, with strain rate and dy density. ‘Another valuable set of data was published by Eis = 60a, 6:148 Mechanical Properties of Frozen Soils Finally, Shibata et al. (1985) showed the results of a series of triaxial compression tests with a frozen sand at temperatures between —2 and —50°C, at confining pressures between 0 and 10 MPa and at strain rates between 0.027 and 2.7% /min, From a correlation in- volving a large number of test points, they found the following relationship between the initial elastic modu- lus E; (at deviatoric strains of less than 0.2%) and the uniaxial compression strength, gy: E,= 12959, (5.55) ‘They observed that Poisson’s ratio decreased from about 0.2, at temperatures close to the freezing point, down to about 0.1, at temperatures lower than ~ 30°C. 5.6 COMPRESSIBILITY OF FROZEN SOILS ‘As described in Section 5.1, frozen soils are usually considered to be practically incompressible, and these~ fore volume-change deformations can be neglected compared with creep deformations. Investigations con- ducted on various types of frozen soils at different freezing temperatures show that the compressibility of frozen soils can play a significant role in some cases, especially when large areas cary long-terms loads (Brodskaia, 1962; Tsytovich, 1975). Compressibility and its time dependence in frozen soils are due to several causes, such as instantaneous compression of the gaseous phase, creep of ice cement at the grain contacts, and hydrodynamic consolidation due to the expulsion under stress of unfrozen water, the amount of which varies with pressure Johnston, 1981; Artcau, 1984). According to Brodskaia (1962), the ‘Table 5.6, Coefficient of volume change, m,. for several sls shape of the oedometer compression curve varies with, the type and temperature of frozen soil. Usually, with containing large amounts of unfrozen water, its shape is not very different from that obtained for the seme soils when unfrozen, at the same total water content. At lower temperatures, however, the effect of ice cementation becomes more. pronounced, and the behavior under compression becomes more similar to that usually obtained for unfrozen cemented or precon- solidated soils (Johnston, 1981). ‘Typical date for the coefficient of total volume com- pressibility, m,, obtained in odometer compression tests on various soils at different temperatures. by Brodskaia (1962) and Tsytovich (1975) are summarized in Table 5-6. PROBLEMS 5.1 The results of 2 series of uniaxial compression creep tests on a frozen silty sand have been ex- pressed by a general equation [such as Eq. (5.3-3) to (5.3-5)}, giving the total uniaxial strain © as 2 function of applied stress o and time #; with o, in MPa and 1 in minutes. From this general equation, compute the axial strain for a similar frozen soil specimen if it is Toaded up to 2.0 MPa in four stages (i.e. 0.50, 1.00, 1.50, and 2.00 MPa), each load for @ duration of 2h. Total Unfrozen. Presiure interval, kgf/em* eae aoe Bulk on 12 6B coment, content, density, ‘Coefficient of volume change, m, Soil ype % % g/m! cm? fag X 10 ‘Mediumgrained sand 2 02 3990) a 9 6 4 3 a 00 1870 7 Bb © 7 Ss 0 02 1860 2 6 4 8 5 Sly sand 5 32 1900 6 6 6 2 B with massive recure n 80 1880 4 BD 6 Bw M ‘Medium sity lay, 35 123 1830 8 1 6 mw with massive texture 2 19 1840 6 2 7 A swith rtieuler 2 ns mo 5 texture 38 161 7 3 8 HS with stratified 108 m6 1260 hw rexture 2 161 1430 mT HB Varved clay 36 ns 1840 6 2 6 B wD 3 10 1870 Pe Souce: Tayevie (1975). ee