Influence of boundary conditions on the cooling effect of crushed-rock embankment in permafrost regions of Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau

Abstract

Abstract The crushed-rock layer is a highly porous medium that has been used to ensure the stability of embankment in permafrost regions. At present, depending on different boundary conditions (impermeable and permeable) of crushed-rock layer in embankment, the crushed-rock embankments are divided into two kinds of structures in the construction of Qinghai–Tibetan railway in China. One is a closed-boundary crushed-rock embankment; the other is an open-boundary crushed-rock embankment. In order to investigate the influence of boundary conditions (impermeable and permeable) on the cooling effect of a crushed-rock embankment, two numerical models of the unsteady two-dimensional hydrokinetic equations for incompressible fluid are presented to analyze the velocity and temperature characteristics of crushed-rock embankment with different embankment heights under impermeable and permeable boundary conditions for a period of 50 years. The results indicate: (1) the boundary conditions (impermeable and permeable) of crushed-rock embankment can have a very large impact on the heat transfer pattern within it in windy permafrost regions of Qinghai–Tibetan Plateau. The cooling effect of the closed crushed-rock embankment mainly relies on natural convection within crushed-rock layer, which is caused by the thermal boundary condition, but the cooling effect of the open crushed-rock embankment is due to the heat transfer enhancement because of internal forced convection induced by the external low temperature air flow (wind); (2) from the temperature distributions of crushed-rock embankments, it can be found that, under the assumption that the air temperature will be warmed up by 2.6 °C in a period of 50 years and in the areas where the mean annual air temperature is − 4.0 °C, when embankment is low, the cooling effects of crushed-rock embankment have no obvious difference under the two boundary conditions, and the cooling effect of closed crushed-rock embankment is only a little better than that of open one; however, when embankment is high, the boundary conditions cause a distinct influence on the temperature distribution of crushed-rock embankment, and the cooling effect under the permeable boundary condition is far better than that under the impermeable boundary condition. However, the asymmetric temperature distribution problem of the high crushed-rock embankment, caused by permeable boundary and external wind, must be considered when it is designed and constructed.