Frost Heave Induced Mechanics of Buried Pipelines

This paper examines the problem of the flexural interaction between a long-distance buried pipeline embedded in a soil medium that experiences differential frost heave. The modeling takes into consideration the interaction at a transition zone between a frozen region and a frost-susceptible region that experiences a time-dependent growth of a frost bulb around the buried pipeline. The heave that accompanies the development of a frost bulb induces the soil-pipeline interaction process. The analysis focuses on the development of a computational scheme that addresses the three-dimensional nature of the soil-pipeline interaction problem, the creep susceptibility of the frozen region, and a prescribed time- and stress-dependent heave in an evolving frost bulb zone. The numerical results presented in the paper illustrate the influence of the heave process and the creep behavior of the frozen soil on the displacements and stresses in the buried pipeline.