Variations of the temperatures and volumetric unfrozen water contents of fine-grained soils during a freezing–thawing process

In this study, the variations of the temperatures and volumetric unfrozen water contents for two fine-grained soils (i.e., silty clay and silt) with high degrees of saturation during a freezing–thawing process were experimentally studied. Experimental results show that for the two soils, the supercooling phenomenon only happens in the early stage of freezing process, and the supercooling temperature and its duration of the silty clay are both larger than those of the silt under similar temperatures; furthermore, the hysteresis effect of volumetric unfrozen water content exists during the whole freezing–thawing process, and the maximum hysteresis levels both occur at the soil freezing points; however, the maximum value of the hysteresis level of the silt is larger than that of the silty clay.