Frost heaving
Frost heaving (or a frost heave) is an upwards swelling of
Needle ice is essentially frost heaving that occurs at the beginning of the freezing season, before the freezing front has penetrated very far into the soil and there is no soil overburden to lift as a frost heave.[5]
Mechanisms
Historical understanding of frost heaving
Urban Hjärne described frost effects in soil in 1694.[a][5][6][7][8] By 1930, Stephen Taber, head of the Department of Geology at the University of South Carolina, had disproved the hypothesis that frost heaving results from molar volume expansion with freezing of water already present in the soil prior to the onset of subzero temperatures, i.e. with little contribution from the migration of water within the soil.
Since the
Taber demonstrated that liquid water migrates towards the freeze line within soil. He showed that other liquids, such as
Development of ice lenses
The dominant cause of soil displacement in frost heaving is the development of
Owing to the
Another water-transport effect is the preservation of a few molecular layers of liquid water on the surface of the ice lens, and between ice and soil particles. Faraday reported in 1860 on the unfrozen layer of premelted water.
Micro-scale processes
The same intermolecular forces that cause premelting at surfaces contribute to frost heaving at the particle scale on the bottom side of the forming ice lens. When ice surrounds a fine soil particle as it premelts, the soil particle will be displaced downward towards the warm direction within the thermal gradient due to melting and refreezing of the thin film of water that surrounds the particle. The thickness of such a film is temperature dependent and is thinner on the colder side of the particle.
Water has a lower
Frost-susceptible soils
Frost heaving requires a frost-susceptible soil, a continual supply of water below (a
Non-frost-susceptible soils may be too dense to promote water flow (low hydraulic conductivity) or too open in porosity to promote capillary flow. Examples include dense clays with a small pore size and therefore a low hydraulic conductivity and clean sands and gravels, which contain small amounts of fine particles and whose pore sizes are too open to promote capillary flow.[18]
Landforms created by frost heaving
Frost heaving creates raised-soil landforms in various geometries, including circles, polygons and stripes, which may be described as palsas in soils that are rich in organic matter, such as peat, or lithalsa[19] in more mineral-rich soils.[20] The stony lithalsa (heaved mounds) found on the archipelago of Svalbard are an example. Frost heaves occur in alpine regions, even near the equator, as illustrated by palsas on Mount Kenya.[21]
In
Polygonal forms apparently caused by frost heave have been observed in near-polar regions of Mars by the
In refrigerated buildings
Cold-storage buildings and ice rinks that are maintained at sub-freezing temperatures may freeze the soil below their foundations to a depth of tens of meters. Seasonally frozen buildings, e.g. some ice rinks, may allow the soil to thaw and recover when the building interior is warmed. If a refrigerated building's foundation is placed on frost-susceptible soils with a water table within reach of the freezing front, then the floors of such structures may heave, due to the same mechanisms found in nature. Such structures may be designed to avoid such problems by employing several strategies, separately or in tandem. The strategies include placement of non-frost-susceptible soil beneath the foundation, adding insulation to diminish the penetration of the freezing front, and heating the soil beneath the building sufficiently to keep it from freezing. Seasonally operated ice rinks can mitigate the rate of subsurface freezing by raising the temperature of the ice.[22]
See also
Footnotes
- ^ In the section II. Fl. Om Jord och Landskap i gemeen (II. About the soil and the landscape in general) of his book, Hiärne mentions the phenomenon of "earth casting" or "earth heaving", in which, after the spring thaw, large chunks of sod appear to have been ripped from the ground and tossed: "3. Whether one sees in other places in Sweden, Finland and Iceland, etc., as has so happened in Uppland and in Närke in Viby parish, royal Vallby, that the earth itself with turf and all [in pieces] up to a few cubits long and wide has been thrown upwards which 20 or more men could not do, and a large pit is left afterwards." (3. Om man seer uti andre Orter i Swerige / Fin-Est och Lif-land / etc. så wara stedt / som hår i Upland / och i Nårike i Wijby Sochn / Kongz Wallby / at Jorden sig med Torff och all till någre Alnars Långd och bredd har opkastat det 20 eller flere Karlar teke hint göra / och en stoor Graff effter sig lemnat.) Urban Hjärne, Een kort Anledning till åtskillige Malm- och Bergarters, Mineraliers, Wäxters, och Jordeslags sampt flere sällsamme Tings, effterspöriande och angifwande [A brief guide to discovering and specifying various types of ores and mountains, minerals, plants, and soils, together with several unusual things] (Stockholm, Sweden: 1694). Available on-line at: National Library of Sweden.
References
- ^ from the original on 2013-04-08. Retrieved 2010-03-24.
- PMID 11497990.
- ^ Transports Quebec (2007). "Québec Pavement Story". Archived from the original on 2011-07-16. Retrieved 2010-03-21.
- ^
Widianto; Heilenman, Glenn; Owen, Jerry; Fente, Javier (2009). "Foundation Design for Frost Heave". Cold Regions Engineering 2009: Cold Regions Impacts on Research, Design, and Construction: 599–608. ISBN 9780784410721.
- ^ a b Beskow, Gunnar (1935). "Soil Heaving and Frost Heaving with Special Application to Roads and Railroads" (PDF). The Swedish Geological Society (30). Translated by Osterberg, J. O. Archived from the original on 2013-04-08. Retrieved 2010-03-24.
- ^ Sjögren, Hjalmar (1903) "Om ett "jordkast" vid Glumstorp i Värmland och om dylika företeelser beskrivna av Urban Hiärne" (On an "earth casting" at Glumstorp in Värmland and on such phenomena described by Urban Hiärne), Arkiv för matematik, astronomi och fysik, 1 : 75–99.
- ^
Hjärne, Urban (1694). "Een kort Anledning till åtskillige Malm- och Bergarters, Mineraliers, Wäxters, och Jordeslags sampt flere sällsamme Tings, effterspöriande och angifwande" [A brief guide to discovering and specifying various types of ores and mountains, minerals, plants, and soils, together with several unusual things] (in Swedish). Stockholm.
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(help) - ^ Patrick B. Black and Mark J. Hardenberg, ed.s, Special Report 91-23: Historical Perspectives in Frost Heave Research: The Early Works of S. Taber and G. Beskow (Hanover, New Hampshire: U.S. Army Corps of Engineers: Cold Regions Research & Engineering Laboratory, 1991).
- from the original on 2013-04-08. Retrieved 2010-03-24.
- ^
Bell, Robin E. (27 April 2008). "The role of subglacial water in ice-sheet mass balance". doi:10.1038/ngeo186.
- S2CID 37639112.
- .
- ^ John Tyndall (1858) "On some physical properties of ice," Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London, 148 : 211–229. Summarized in:
Tyndall, J. (1858). "On some physical properties of ice". S2CID 186210972.
- ^ a b
Faraday, M. (1860). "Note on regelation". S2CID 136019935.
- ^ a b
Rempel, A.W.; Wettlaufer, J.S.; Worster, M.G. (2004). "Premelting dynamics in a continuum model of frost heave". S2CID 17061621.
- ^
Chamberlain, Edwin J. (December 1981). "Frost Susceptibility of Soil, Review of Index Tests". Hanover, NH: Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory. ADA111752.
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: Cite journal requires|journal=
(help) - ^ ASTM, Subcommittee: D18.19 (2013), "Standard Test Methods for Frost Heave and Thaw Weakening Susceptibility of Soils", ASTM Book of Standards, 04 (9)
{{citation}}
: CS1 maint: numeric names: authors list (link) - ^ Muench, Steve (6 November 2006). "Pavement Interactive—Frost Action". Retrieved 2010-03-24.
- ^
Pissart, A.; Tilman, Sart (2002). "Palsas, lithalsas and remnants of these periglacial mounds. A progress report". Progress in Physical Geography. 26 (4): 605–621. S2CID 140583281.
- ^ De Schutter, Paul (2005-12-03). "Palsas & Lithalsas". Archived from the original on 2011-07-27. Retrieved 2010-03-10.
- ^ Baker, B. H. (1967). Geology of the Mount Kenya area; degree sheet 44 N.W. quarter (with coloured map). Nairobi: Geological Survey of Kenya.
- ^ Brown, W.G. (January 1965), Frost Heave in Ice Rinks and Cold Storage Buildings, CBD-61, Research Council Canada, retrieved 2018-01-05
Further reading
- Manz, Lorraine (July 2011), "Frost heave" (PDF), Geo News, 32 (2): 18–24