In cold regions, and considering the increasing concerns regarding climate change, it is crucial to assess soil stabilisation techniques under adverse environmental conditions. The study addresses the challenge of forecasting geotechnical properties of lime-stabilised clayey soils subjected to freeze-thaw conditions. A model is proposed to accurately predict the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of lime-stabilised clayey soils exposed to freeze-thaw cycles. As the prediction of UCS is essential in construction engineering, the use of the model is a viable early-phase alternative to time-consuming laboratory testing procedures. This research aims to propose a robust predictive model using readily accessible soil parameters. A comprehensive statistical model for predicting UCS was developed and validated using data sourced from the scientific literature. An extensive parametric analysis was conducted to assess the predictive performance of the developed model. The findings underscore the capability of statistical models to predict UCS of stabilised soils demonstrating their valuable contribution to this area of study.

The stimulation of shale reservoirs frequently involves significant shear failure, which is crucial for creating fracture networks and enhancing permeability to boost production. As the depth of extraction increases, the impact of elevated temperatures on the anisotropic shear strength and failure mechanisms of shale becomes pronounced, yet there is a notable lack of relevant research. This study conducts, for the first time, direct shear experiment on shales at four different temperatures and seven bedding angles. By employing acoustic emission (AE) and digital image correlation (DIC) techniques, the evolution of damage and the mechanism of crack propagation under anisotropic direct shearing at varying temperatures is revealed. The results indicate that both shear displacement and strength of shale increase with temperature across different bedding angles. Additionally, shale demonstrates distinct brittle failure characteristics under various conditions during direct shearing tests. The types of anisotropic shear failure observed under the influence of temperature include central shearing fracture, central shearing with secondary fracture, and deflected slip along the bedding. Moreover, the temperature effect enhances shear-induced crack propagation along bedding planes. Shear failure in shale predominantly occurs during higher loading stages, which coincide with a substantial amount of AE signals. Finally, the introduction of the anisotropy index and temperature sensitivity coefficient further elucidates the interaction mechanism between thermal effects and anisotropy. This study offers a novel methodology to explore the anisotropic shear failure behavior of shale under elevated temperatures, and also provides crucial theoretical and experimental insights into shear failure behavior relevant to practical shale reservoir stimulation. (c) 2025 Institute of Rock and Soil Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/ 4.0/).

Plastic-bonded granular materials (PBM) are widely used in industrial sectors, including building construction, abrasive applications, and defense applications such as plastic-bonded explosives. The mechanical behavior of PBM is highly nonlinear, irreversible, rate dependent, and temperature sensitive governed by various micromechanical attributions such as grain crushing and binder damage. This paper presents a thermodynamically consistent, microstructure-informed constitutive model to capture these characteristic behaviors of PBM. Key features of the model include a breakage internal variable to upscale the grain-scale information to the continuum level and to predict grain size evolution under mechanical loading. In addition, a damage internal state variable is introduced to account for the damage, deterioration, and debonding of the binder matrix upon loading. Temperature is taken as a fundamental external state variable to handle non-isothermal loading paths. The proposed model is able to capture with good accuracy several important aspects of the mechanical properties of PBM, such as pressure-dependent elasticity, pressure-dependent yield strength, brittle-to-ductile transition, temperature dependency, and rate dependency in the post-yielding regime. The model is validated against multiple published datasets obtained from confined and unconfined compression tests, covering various PBM compositions, confining pressures, temperatures, and strain rates.

This paper explores the influence of two thermal loading protocols on the evolutions of stress state and soil consolidation characteristics during subsequent mechanical loading. We employed a specially designed thermal consolidometer to conduct a series of drained heating tests with temperature gradient across a saturated kaolin specimen at different levels of vertical effective stress. The thermal consolidometer accommodated for (1) continuous measurements of excess pore water pressure and temperature at different locations within a specimen; and (2) establishment of a steady nonuniform soil temperature distribution, a condition that often exists in the field. Staged and cyclic thermal loading revealed the influences of vertical effective stress on total and nonrecoverable thermal strain. Continuous measurements of pore pressure and soil volume change traced the evolution of average vertical effective stress with void ratio. While the negative pore pressure measurements at the end of thermal consolidation of normally consolidated clay suggested a pseudo-overconsolidated behavior upon heating at low values of vertical effectives stress, such a tendency diminished with an increase in stress level. A gradual shift in normal consolidation line at ambient temperature suggested continuous hardening of a normally consolidated specimen when subjected to repeated thermal loading cycles in the past.

This paper presents a new and rigorous method for simulating thermo-elasto-plastic responses of soil during the cylindrical cavity expansion process under undrained conditions. The soil is modeled by a modified nonisothermal unified hardening model, which can properly consider thermal effects on mechanical responses, thermally induced excess pore water pressure as well as the overconsolidation characteristics. The temperaturedependent governing equations are derived by combining equilibrium equations and constitutive relations. New solution algorithms are developed to solve governing equations and update temperature -related parameters during the expansion process. Two typical scenarios, one is cavity expansion under different temperatures and another is temperature variation after expansion, are simulated. The proposed computational approach is validated through comparisons with results obtained from Abaqus numerical simulations, non -isothermal analyses, and experimental data. As demonstrated by extensive parametric studies, the proposed computational approach can reasonably capture the influence of temperature on cavity expansion, which can be further applied, modified, and developed for various industrial and geophysical problems involving thermoplastic soils.

Long-term thermal effects of air convection embankments (ACEs) over 550-km-long permafrost zones along the Qinghai-Tibet railway were analyzed on the basis of 14-year records (2002-2016) of ground temperature. The results showed that, after embankment construction, permafrost tables beneath the ACEs moved upward quickly in the first 3years and then remained stable over the next 10years. The magnitude of this upward movement showed a positive correlation with embankment thickness. Shallow permafrost temperature beneath the ACEs decreased over a 5-year period after embankment construction in cold permafrost zones, but increased sharply concurrent with permafrost table upward movement in warm permafrost zones. Deep permafrost beneath all the ACEs showed a slow warming trend due to climate warming. Overall, the thermal effects of ACEs significantly uplifted underlying permafrost tables after embankment construction and then maintained them well in a warming climate. The different thermal effects of ACEs in cold and warm permafrost zones related to the working principle of the ACEs and natural ground thermal regime in the two zones. (c) 2018 American Society of Civil Engineers.