Evaluation of the Strength Characteristics of Silty-Clayey Soils during Freezing-Thawing Cycles

Abstract

Destructuring settlements due to frost heave during the structures’ exploitation are often not taken into account at the designing stage, although they are indirectly related to the bearing capacity of the soils. The objective of this research was analyzing the effect of the number of freezing-thawing cycles on the strength characteristics of soils. A paired experiment with various initial parameters (void ratio, initial moisture content, and the number of freezing-thawing cycles) was carried out. According to the experimental results, the cohesion largely depends on the above parameters which might lead to its decrease by up to three times. The angle of internal friction demonstrated an indefinite behavior during the freeze-thaw cycles, which is confirmed by a literature review. Freezing–thawing cycles significantly decrease the soil bearing capacity: up to 44% after 10 freezing-thawing cycles for soil with e=0.55 and w=16.5%. However, in the case of e=0.75 and w=22.6%, it increased by 33%. A program based on the least-squares method was used to calculate the approximation coefficients of the dependence describing the changes in strength characteristics from the abovementioned parameters. Changes in strength characteristics must be taken into account when designing structures, as they can lead to additional settlement or even subsidence of the foundations.