Roadbed temperature study based on earth-atmosphere coupled system in permafrost regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau

Abstract

Abstract In this work, a two-dimensional unsteady model for analyzing the roadbed temperature in permafrost regions of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau (QTP) is developed and the heat transfer processes of comprehensive earth-atmosphere coupled system are simulated by the numerical method. In the computation, the surrounding air environment of ground surface is brought into the research model and the corresponding unsteady and non-uniform influence factors of earth-atmosphere coupled system are also considered to obtain reasonable simulation results. Meanwhile, the model is validated with monitored data at a depth of 0.5 m in different roadbed positions. Based on the above model, the spatial and temporal temperature distributions of the roadbed surface in Wudaoliang region are determined. Then the influences of the system parameters, such as the ambient temperature, wind speed, roadbed height and route trends, on the local temperature distribution are investigated. The results show that, temperature of surface regions exhibits a periodic sinusoid trend and always higher than the ambient air temperature. For different surface regions, the temperature of asphalt pavement keeps the maximum value and the natural ground surface has an abrupt step change in temperature at beginning of April and end of October. The variation of ambient air temperature has little influence on annual average temperature of permafrost roadbed surface. The deviations between the surfaces' annual average temperature increase and their average values are less than 1%. Annual average temperature of various surfaces decreases as the wind speed and the roadbed height increase. Furthermore, the annual average temperature of leeward slope (also sunny side) along EW direction is the highest one among all three route directions and such temperature decreased systematically from SW45° direction to SN direction. However, the annual temperature of upwind slope (also shady side) is just contrary to the leeward slope.