Thermal Regime of Highway Embankments in the Arctic: Field Observations and Numerical Simulations
Publication: Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 147, Issue 6
Abstract
There is limited understanding of how frozen fill compacted below freezing air temperatures affects the performance of highway embankments in the Arctic. Fill material needed to construct embankments is typically obtained from borrow sources potentially containing high ice content that makes compaction challenging. Embankment test sections along the recently constructed Inuvik-Tuktoyaktuk Highway (ITH) in the Northwest Territories, Canada, were constructed with frozen fill material and instrumented with thermistor strings to monitor temperatures at different locations within the embankment and the foundation soil. Thermal modeling was carried out using a commercially available finite-element software applying (1) thermal modifiers available from the literature and (2) available climate parameters from weather stations and satellite data for a surface energy balance model calibrated with recorded field data. Thermal model results for the 3-year monitoring period show good agreement with recorded field data for both modeling approaches. With climate change being an important consideration for embankment design, construction, and maintenance in the Arctic, climate modeling scenarios provided by the Canadian Centre for Climate Modelling and Analysis (CCCma) were used to evaluate thermal resilience under near-term and long-term conditions. The results confirm that the design of embankments and maintenance operations need to consider impacts of near-term and long-term climate change in order to maintain the thermal stability of these embankments and to provide adequate resilience against permafrost degradation.
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Data Availability Statement
All data, models, and code generated or used during the study appear in the published article.
Acknowledgments
The work presented in this paper was supported by the Department of Infrastructure of the government of the Northwest Territories and Transport Canada. The Structural Innovation and Monitoring Technologies Resource Centre provided funding to some instrumentation. E. Gruben’s Transport was the contractor for the north-side construction of the highway and provided logistical support with Department of Infrastructure personnel at the construction site and formed a critical part of the successful construction of the test section. The assistances of Kerry Lynch and Aron Piamsalee during the installation of instrumentation in April 2015 and Samuel Kaluzny for the installation of the local weather station, camera traps, and coring of frozen core samples from the foundation at the research site in March 2017 are greatly appreciated. Finally, the authors acknowledge the valuable contributions from the reviewers on an earlier version of this manuscript that helped improve its readability.
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Information & Authors
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Published In
Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering
Volume 147 • Issue 6 • June 2021
Copyright
© 2021 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jan 28, 2020
Accepted: Dec 14, 2020
Published online: Apr 13, 2021
Published in print: Jun 1, 2021
Discussion open until: Sep 13, 2021
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