Influence of water and salt contents on strength of artificially frozen soils

The artificial freezing method is widely used in the urban construction of underground engineering, such as the foundation reinforcement and excavation of subway tunnels. The strength properties of artificially frozen soils are affected by many factors. Water content, temperature, salt content and other factors affect the strength of artificially frozen soils to a large degree. At present, a lot of researches on uniaxial compressive strength of artificially frozen soils has been made, but they are certainly regional. For the silty clay and clay in Tianjin area, a series of uniaxial compressive strength tests are conducted with different water and salt contents. According to the test results, the effects of water and salt contents on the strength characteristics and the “optimum water content of the artificially frozen soils” are obtained. The test results show that the dry density of the soils has little effect on the water content corresponding to the peak strength of silty clay and clay. The conclusions can be used to guide the design of engineering in Tianjin area.