Experimental Investigation on the Effect of Salt Solution on the Soil Freezing Characteristic Curve for Expansive Soils

Haiwen Yu, Fengfu Hao, Panpan Yi, Qin Zhang and Tiantian Ma ()
Additional contact information
Haiwen Yu: State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
Fengfu Hao: Guangxi Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004, China
Panpan Yi: State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China
Qin Zhang: Guangxi Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, College of Civil Engineering and Architecture, Guilin University of Technology, Guilin 541004, China
Tiantian Ma: State Key Laboratory of Geomechanics and Geotechnical Engineering, Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Wuhan 430071, China

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 16, issue 1, 1-16

Abstract: With the development of the Belt and Road Initiative in China, high-speed railways are booming and inevitably pass through seasonal frost regions. In Nanyang basin, due to seasonal changes, railway subgrades will undergo frost heaving and thawing subsidence. The freezing characteristics of the soil are characterized by the freezing characteristic curve, and the important factors affecting the freezing characteristic curve are the content of expansive clay minerals in the soil and the salt solution. Therefore, three soil samples with different montmorillonite contents were saturated with salt solutions of different concentrations, and the freezing temperature of the soil samples was controlled by a cold bath. After the temperature equilibrium, the frozen stable soil samples were put into a nuclear magnetic resonance instrument to test the unfrozen water content, and the relationship between the freezing temperature and the unfrozen water content of expansive soil under different salt solution concentrations was obtained. Additionally, a unified model was used to simulate the test results. The results show that SFCC shifts to the left, that is, the sodium chloride salt solution reduces the freezing point of the soil sample so that it has more unfrozen water at the same temperature. At the same time, the soil’s freezing characteristic curves are closely related to content of expansive clay minerals in the soil. The more expansive clay mineral content, the greater the corresponding unfrozen water content. These results provide some basic insights for improving the frost heave and thaw subsidence problems of railway subgrades in seasonal permafrost regions, which will have a positive impact on promoting the management and rational application of land resources and the promotion of sustainable development.

Keywords: expansive soil; illitic soil; sodium bentonite; salt solution; freezing characteristic curve (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/1/363/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/16/1/363/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:16:y:2023:i:1:p:363-:d:1310944

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().