Observation Test on the Physical Properties of Accumulated Snow in Constructing Embankment

Abstract

Drifting snow is one of the main disasters in blocking railways and road traffics in cold areas. It has been becoming a key issue to reduce hazards from drifting snow in the engineering constructions in cold areas. The physical properties of snowfall and drifting snow, together with the transformation over terrain by engineering construction, give significant influence on the formation and growth of drifting snow. The accumulated snow distributing on high embankment transects built in the Jinghe-Yining Railway (JYR) has been chosen as the main object of this research, and a field observation of weather conditions over this area with in-situ experiments of the physical properties of snow and has been reported. All results indicated: the snow density and hardness were generally changed with the similar trending of air temperature variation, and both snow density and hardness increased with the duration of snow accumulated. However, the change of snow density and hardness appeared much more complicated variations than that of the air temperature. The snow depth and pressure, as well as the density and hardness were complicatedly distributed on both sides of the embankment transect, either roughly symmetrical or significantly different. We concluded that a great influence on the physical properties of snow had been exerted by many factors such as the topographic features, the redistribution of snowfall brought by engineering constructions, the weather conditions during snow accumulating etc.