No abstract

The city of Arkhangelsk has the complicated geological conditions, particularly wide spread occurrence of soft ground such as peat and mud. The average annual atmospheric temperature is about +0.8 о С and that enables the seasonal frost penetration up to 1.8…2.2 m. Usually the frost penetration causes damages to low-rise buildings, road paving, and pipelines. But the authors unexpectedly found in the process of their practical activities deformations of a building supported by 18 meter piles which were caused by the frost heave of a mud. The building is a cooling house designed for fish storage at the temperature of-22…-24 о С which has been operated since 1985. It was found by drilling boreholes that the mud under the center of the building was frozen at the depth from 3.8 to 8.1 m. The floor uplift reached 18 cm, the inner columns uplift-13 cm and the building was taken out of service. The numerical simulation data for 29 years of the building operation period performed by the Geostudio software correlate quite close with the data obtained by drilling the boreholes. The achieved experience may be useful for construction of ice rinks, cooling houses as well as for regular not heated storage buildings. As for the latter buildings located in the regions with the average annual atmospheric temperature about 0 о Сthe frozen ground layers may continue and their thickness may increase for several years.