Heat Transfer Characteristics of Sand-Filled Embankment in Permafrost Regions of Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Aeolian sand is widely distributed in cold regions. It has a significant influence on infrastructure safety. By now, aeolian sand is treated as a disaster-inducing factor along the Qinghai Tibet Plateau Engineering Corridor. The objective of this study is to explore the feasibility of sand as a geo-material in highway construction in permafrost regions. Numerical simulation was used to investigate the heat transfer characteristics of the sand-filled embankment in this paper. Results indicate that dry sand-filled embankment has a good performance in protecting permafrost than the wet sand-filled embankment. The performance gets better with the increasing of sand layer thickness. The left slope of embankment covered by sand and crushed rock can reduce permafrost temperature underneath the south-facing side of the embankment. The results indicate that the slope protection measure is an effective method to mitigate the problem of asymmetric temperature field caused by sunny–shady slope effect. Those results indicate that aeolian sand can be used as subgrade material on Tibetan Plateau due to small thermal conductivity.