Analysis on the Settlement of Roadway Embankments in Permafrost Regions

In permafrost regions, the embankment settlement results from several physical and mechanical processes taking place in the different soil layer, making its mechanism very complicated. Under the thermal influence of embankment, climate warming as well as geothermal source, permafrost may degrade downwards or upwards, which continuously changes the thicknesses of the permafrost layer and the also unfrozen soil layers. Thus, any attempt to analyze the embankment settlement seems to be very troublesome and difficult. In this paper, based on ground temperatures of embankment sections in five typical regions along the Qinghai-Tibet Highway (QTH), the trends of variation of different soil layers and the thermal gradients are investigated. On this basis, four types of sections, which can represent most of the sections of QTH, are deduced to clarify the possible settlement sources in different soil layers. In order to further confirm and investigate of the settlement sources, an embankment model test was carried out. Combing the in-situ monitoring data with the results from the model test, the main settlement sources in embankment settlement are discussed for the four types of sections respectively. The results will facilitate the analysis of embankment settlement in permafrost regions.