Numerical experiments on freeze-thaw of soils with coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical FE analysis

This study proposes a new numerical model to simulate the Thermo-Hydro-Mechanical (THM) behavior of saturated and unsaturated soils suffered from one-dimensional freeze-thawing. First, a coupled THM FE analysis, which can consider the change in deformation-strength and water retention-permeability characteristics due to freeze-thaw actions, was newly developed. It also can reproduce frost heave phenomenon of soils under saturated and unsaturated conditions based on the results of frost susceptibility tests. Subsequently, a series of numerical simulations on frost heave tests of a soil specimen was conducted by the proposed FE analysis, and the analytical results were compared with experimental results to examine the applicability of the coupled FE analysis. As the result, it was revealed that the coupled FE analysis proposed in this study has valuable advantages of excellent applicability to the precise prediction method for the thermal-hydro-mechanical behavior of frost-susceptible soils during freeze-thaw.