Damage mechanism of soil-rock mixture after freeze-thaw cycles

As a widely distributed geological and engineering material, the soil-rock mixture always undergoes frequentative and short-term freeze-thaw cycles in some regions. Its internal structure is destroyed seriously, but the damage mechanism is not clear. Based on the damage factor, the damage research of properties of soil-rock mixture after different times of freeze-thaw cycles is investigated. Firstly, the size-distributed subgrade gravelly soil samples are prepared and undergo different times of freeze-thaw cycles periodically (0, 3, 6, 10), and indoor large-scale triaxial tests are completed. Secondly, the degradation degree of elastic modulus is considered as a damage factor, and applied to macro damage analysis of soil-rock mixture. Finally, the mesoscopic simulation of the experiments is achieved by PFC^3D, and the influence on strength between soil-rock particles caused by freeze-thaw cycles is analyzed. The results show that freeze-thaw cycles cause internal damage of samples by weakening the strength between mesoscopic soil-rock particles, and ultimately affect the macro properties. After freeze-thaw cycles, on the macro-scale, elastic modulus and shear strength of soil-rock mixture both decrease, and the decreasing degree is related to the times of cycles with the mathmatical quadratic form; on the meso-scale, freeze-thaw cycles mainly cause the degradation of the strength between soil-rock particles whose properties are different significantly.