ON THE PREDICTION OF HYDRAULIC CONDUCTIVITY OF FROZEN SOILS

This paper describes a mathematical model for predicting the hydraulic conductivity of partially frozen soils on the basis of limited input data such as grain size distribution and bulk density or porosity. A n ew model is based on an analogy for the hydraulic conductivity of froz en and unfrozen soils and models for the estimation of hydraulic prope rties of soils and unfrozen water content. Campbell's model was used f or prediction of soil-water characteristics from limited data, while u nfrozen water content was obtained from two models (by P.J. Williams a nd D.M. Anderson) applied to two different temperature ranges. The new model can be used for the rapid estimation of the hydraulic conductiv ity of practically any freezing soil having log-normal grain size dist ribution and for computer simulation of moisture migration in soils be low the freezing point. An acceptable conformity between the model pre diction and measured data for pure sand has been achieved. The compute r program developed requires the following input data: grain size dist ribution, bulk density or porosity, and soil temperature.