Mechanical properties of frozen coarse-grained soils

Coarse-grained soils are extensively used in hydraulic engineering, highway and underground construction practice. Many problems in predicting the behaviour of underground structures constructed by artificial freezing, and of soil structures built on frozen soils, require that the thermal, mechanical and cryogenic processes, observed both in the structures and their foundation bases, be taken jointly into account (Tsytovich, 1973; Kronik, 1978, 1979; Tsytovich and Kronik, 1979). In this connection, integrated research on the cryogenic and physicomechanical properties of coarse-grained softs is being conducted in the Branch Research Laboratory for Engineering Cryopedology in Power Plant Construction (BRLECPPC) under the general supervision of Prof. N.A. Tsytovich, Corresponding Member of the USSR Academy of Sciences. In the general case of superposition of many processes that influence the stressed--strained state of a frozen multiple-component soil medium, the following defining equation (system of equations of state) (Kronik, 1978) can be proposed as a first approximation: