Temperature effect on the compressive strength of frozen soils: A review

Abstract

Among the numerous influencing factors on the strength behavior of frozen soil, such as grain size, temperature, water content, strain rate, and confining pressure, etc. the temperature is a crucial one. In this paper a number of references concerning the temperature effect are reviewed. It is found that the strength of different frozen soils increases with the decrease of temperature below the freezing point of water, and the quantitative dependence of the strength on temperature can be primarily described by two kinds of functions, namely power function and linear function. The function parameters, including the exponent and slope, are collected. Moreover, how the other influencing factors affect the temperature parameter is also analyzed. It is found that, for example, the decrease in strain rate for testing or the increase in dry density of specimen will cause an increase in the exponent in the power function of temperature. Besides the temperature often encountered in engineering problem, the strength behavior of frozen soil at cryogenic temperatures is also reviewed.