Geotechnical monitoring of frozen soils: problems and possible solutions

Abstract

A great part of the territory of the Russian Federation is located in the zone of permafrost soils. Safe operation management of buildings and structures, in permafrost conditions, requires geotechnical monitoring of subgrade soils. The increase in air temperature recorded during numerous monitoring leads to the degradation of permafrost soils. Therefore, the problem of conducting geotechnical monitoring becomes more urgent than ever. This paper analyzes the existing methods and systems for geotechnical monitoring of permafrost soils. The authors reveal the drawbacks of the applied methods and the reasons that do not allow assessing the state of frozen soils with sufficient accuracy. In order to solve these problems, it is proposed to use an active acoustic method of non-destructive testing and create a system that combines an engineering-geological method determining the deformation properties of frozen soils and active acoustic method.