Study on Lateral Earth Pressure Coefficient at Rest for Frozen Soils

The lateral earth pressure coefficient at rest, K-0, is an important parameter in geotechnical engineering. There have been many studies for unfrozen soils; however, this is not the case for frozen soils, which impedes reasonable calculation concerning cold regions engineering. This paper introduces a novel triaxial apparatus for frozen soils with reference to that for unfrozen soils. The device is capable of performing experiments on frozen soil samples with K-0 status under precisely controlled negative temperature. Two soils along the Qinghai-Tibetan highway are taken as study objects. K-0 experiments are carried out with the apparatus and K-0 is obtained under different testing conditions. It is found that temperature is a dominant factor in influencing K-0 of frozen soils, while stress state and soil type should also be taken into account.