The thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) properties of frozen soils depend primarily on the parameters like volumetric ice content, unfrozen water content, dry density, mineralogy, temperature etc. However, establishing the influence of ice/unfrozen water content on the abovementioned properties of frozen soils becomes a challenging task owing to the dependency of ice/unfrozen water content on temperature. The relationship between unfrozen water content and temperature is conventionally referred to as the ‘Soil Freezing Characteristics Curve’, SFCC. With this in view, an easy and efficient capacitance-based technique has been utilized to determine the volumetric ice content of standard sands of varying initial volumetric moisture content (=6%, 12%, 18%, 25 % and 41%) by exposing them from room temperature to −15°C in a controlled manner. It was found that the SFCCs obtained from these experiments depend upon the initial volumetric moisture content of the soils. Further, existing analytical SFCC models were employed to fit the experimental results. It was found that the model parameters are highly dependent upon the initial volumetric moisture content, and models are incapable of including the effect of initial water content on the SFCC.

冻土的热水力学 (THM) 特性主要取决于体积冰含量、未冻水含量、干密度、矿物学、温度等参数。 然而，确定冰/未冻水含量对上述特性的影响由于冰/未冻水含量对温度的依赖性，冻土的处理成为一项具有挑战性的任务。未冻结水含量与温度之间的关系通常称为“土壤冻结特性曲线”，SFCC。有鉴于此，一种简单有效的基于电容的技术已被用于确定不同初始体积含水量（=6%、 12%、 18%、 25 % 和 41%），以受控方式将它们从室温暴露到 -15°C。发现从这些实验中获得的 SFCC 取决于土壤的初始体积含水量。此外，采用现有的分析 SFCC 模型来拟合实验结果。发现模型参数高度依赖于初始体积含水量，并且模型不能包括初始含水量对 SFCC 的影响。