Prevention method of soil freezing during pile driving in winter

Abstract

One of the common challenges of driving piles in winter is frozen soil. The depth of frozen soil reaches two meters in Northern and Central Kazakhstan that made it difficult to build the pile foundations in cold months. In order to prevent the pile distraction, the places of pile installation are usually drilled by drilling machines which takes time and additional cost for preparatory works. In this paper we proposed a new method of preventing the soil from freezing by using an antifreeze reagent. The reagent can also be used to thaw the frozen ground which allows the construction works in winter months. During the static load test, the piles driven into the soil that had been applied with antifreeze reagent have shown more accurate bearing capacity data. The scientific and experimental studies have established that the antifreeze reagent reduces the ompressibility of frozen soil.