Abstract
In seasonally frozen soil regions, the frost heaving problem made it difficult to monitor or evaluate the pile safety for long term. So far, no mature tool can be utilized to monitor the frost heaving force, which was unevenly distributed along the pile. In this paper, a piezoceramic sensing based transient excitation response approach was proposed to monitor the frost heaving force in real time. Freeze-thaw cycles can result in great changes of soil engineering properties, including the frost heaving force. So, the freeze-thaw cycle was repeated fourth to study its effect. In the experiment, transient horizontal shock on the top of the pile will be detected by the 6 PZT sensors glued on the pile. The signal data received by the 6 PZT sensors can be used to illustrate the frost heaving force distribution along the pile. Moisture content effect is also one of the important reasons that cause the variation of soil mechanical properties. So three different moisture content (6%, 12%, 18%) testing soil were used in this experiment to detect the variance of the frost heaving force. An energy indicator was developed to quantitatively evaluate the frost heaving force applied on the pile. The experimental results showed that the proposed method was effective in monitoring the uneven distribution of frost heaving force along the pile.
