Frost heave is a process coupling heat transfer, water migration, water–ice phase change and deformation. Frost heave forms various landforms, such as frost mounds, ice pitons, sorted polygons and stone circles, and potentially induces a variety of engineering failures, such as building inclination, differential engineering foundation and pavement cracking. To understand the mechanism of frost heave under complex freezing paths, we provide a numerical heat–water–mechanics model that incorporates shrinkage in an unfrozen zone and uses a water content criterion to judge the formation of the ice lens. The model is then used to simulate the moisture, temperature, deformation and ice lens of a freezing soil during stepwise freezing. The simulated results for temperature, displacement and the ice lens are in good agreement with measured data, indicating that the model can be used to describe the heat–water–mechanics process in freezing soils under a complex freezing path. The freezing path determines the soil's water content profile in a manner like that in a stepwise freezing process, where each step produces a water‐content peak at the frozen fringe of the step. The model must consider shrinkage of the unfrozen area, or the amount of frost heave would be overestimated and the predicted ice lens would unrealistically be found in the frozen zone.

中文翻译：

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逐步冻结条件下冻结土壤中的热-水-力学过程模拟

冻胀是传热、水分迁移、水冰相变和变形耦合的过程。冻胀形成霜丘、冰柱、分选多边形、石圈等多种地貌，并可能诱发建筑倾斜、工程基础差、路面开裂等多种工程故障。为了理解复杂冻结路径下冻胀的机制，我们提供了一个数值热-水-力学模型，该模型结合了未冻结区的收缩，并使用含水量标准来判断冰晶状体的形成。然后使用该模型来模拟逐步冻结过程中冻结土壤的水分、温度、变形和冰晶状体。温度、位移和冰晶状体的模拟结果与实测数据吻合较好，表明该模型可用于描述复杂冻结路径下冻结土壤的热-水-力学过程。冻结路径以类似于逐步冻结过程中的方式确定土壤的含水量分布，其中每个步骤在步骤的冻结边缘产生含水量峰值。模型必须考虑未冻结区的收缩，否则会高估冻胀量，在冻结区发现预测的冰晶状体不切实际。