Pavement-Transportation Computer Assisted Structural Engineering (PCASE) Implementation of the Modified Berggren (ModBerg) Equation for Computing the Frost Penetration Depth within Pavement Structures

The design of pavement structures in cold climates must account for the changes in soil properties due to the influence of freezing and thawing cycles. The calculation of the frost penetration depth is a fundamental step in the design and evaluation of pavement structures by the U.S. Department of D...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Authors: Bianchini, Alessandra, Gonzalez, Carlos R
Other Authors: ENGINEER RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT CENTER VICKSBURG MS GEOTECHNICAL AND STRUCTURES LAB
Format: Text
Language:English
Published: 2012
Subjects:
Snow
Ice and Permafrost
Civil Engineering
*PAVEMENTS
COLD REGIONS
COMPUTER APPLICATIONS
COMPUTER PROGRAMS
DEPTH
FROST
HEAT FLUX
THAWING
FROST DEPTH
HEAT FLOW
MODBERG EQUATION
MODIFIED BERGGREN EQUATION
PAVEMENT STRUCTURES
THAW DEPTH
Ice
permafrost
Online Access:http://www.dtic.mil/docs/citations/ADA559915
http://oai.dtic.mil/oai/oai?&verb=getRecord&metadataPrefix=html&identifier=ADA559915
Description
Summary:The design of pavement structures in cold climates must account for the changes in soil properties due to the influence of freezing and thawing cycles. The calculation of the frost penetration depth is a fundamental step in the design and evaluation of pavement structures by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD). To compute the frost penetration, the DoD currently uses the modified Berggren (ModBerg) equation. The Unified Facilities Criteria (UFC) 3-130-06 includes a methodology to manually compute the frost depth. The Pavement-Transportation Computer Assisted Structural Engineering (PCASE) software incorporates a more accurate numerical solution of the ModBerg equation, which in some instances provides slightly different values than the manual solution described in the UFC. Researchers from the U.S. Army Engineer Research and Development Center (ERDC) realized the need to explain why the same procedure results in different values of the frost depth, and sought to reaffirm the importance of advanced numerical tools in pavement design and evaluation. The objective of this report is to present the solution of the heat equation applied to a one-dimensional homogeneous and isotropic layer, which is currently implemented in the PCASE software. The report also explains the differences between the UFC- and PCASE-computed solutions. The original document contains color images.

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