Experimental Study on the Effect of Fines Content on the Frost Swelling Characteristics of Coarse-Grained Soil in Canal Base Under Open System

Abstract Engineering usually considers coarse-grained soils as non-frost swelling soils, but serious frost swelling still occurs in coarse-grained canal bases, which is directly related to the recharge conditions and the fine particle content in the soil. Little attention is currently paid to the effect of different fine particle contents on coarse-grained soil frost swelling, especially after the fine particle admixture content exceeds 16%. This paper considers the characteristics of coarse-grained soils in water conservancy projects with fines content between 0% and 50%. The coarse-grained soils with 5%, 15%, 25%, 35%, and 45% fines content were designed for freezing and swelling tests. The evolution of temperature and moisture fields and the amount of freezing and swelling of coarse-grained soils during the freezing process were studied by using servo-type freezing and swelling and thawing tester. The experimental results show that the cooling process of soil samples can be divided into a rapid cooling stage, a slow cooling stage, and a freezing stabilization stage. The cooling rate and the frost heave amount with increasing fines content showed a trend of first increasing and then decreasing.