Laboratory Approach Towards Modelling the Thawing Behaviour of Artificially Frozen Clays
Abstract—Abstract: The need of a rational approach to accurately predict thethaw-settlement has limited the ground-freezing applications to construction activities. Towards this scope, series of laboratory tests were carried out to understand the freezing thawing behavior of a representative clay element. The behavior of two different clays were investigated and interpreted in light of the state framework. The changes instate, defined by the specific volume and effective stress,during repeated freeze-thaw cycles are discussed and a general relationship has been formulated to describe their recoverable behavior at representative element scale.This paper presents a physical parameter, called the‘frozen state parameter’ that combines the influence of void ratio and stress level with reference to an eventual (ultimate)state after cyclic freezing and thawing, to describe the thawing behavior of clays. Results from all-round freeze-thaw tests performed on the commercially available Kasaokaclay and natural Higashi-Osaka clay demonstrated that the volumetric changes due to freezing and thawing normalize well to the frozen state parameter.
