Characterization of Frost Susceptibility of Soils by Mercury Porosimetry

✍ Scribed by Haiying Fu; J.G. Dash

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 317 KB
• Volume: 159
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9797
• DOI: 10.1006/jcis.1993.1332

✦ Synopsis

Mercury porosimetry is described as a method for rapid and detailed prediction of the water-ice phase fraction in porous media. The mercury volume-intrusion pressure approximates the functional dependence of the ice volume-temperature curve in the range most important for frost heave, i.e., within a few degrees of the transition. The method was tested by comparing porosimetry-based predicted freezing curves against direct measurements of the ice-water ratio by time domain reflectometry, for several types of artificial powders and natural soils. The technique includes a simple method of correction for the effects of solutes in the dilute range. Except for compression effects produced in powders of very fine particles, the soil freezing curve (SFC) predicted on the basis of mercury porosimetry is found to be in very good agreement with the directly measured freezing curves. 1993 Academic Press, Inc.