Reline Jacket: Efficient Reduction of Frost-Heave Uplift of Piles in Warming Permafrost

Abstract

Air temperature in the Northern Hemisphere has been progressively warming in the recent decades, and the ground temperatures have increased correspondingly. The air temperature increasing due to the climate change induces degradation of permafrost and frost heaving activation. The frost heaving forces cause unevenly distributed damaging displacement of foundations and thus poses problems to the development of Arctic regions. Frost-heave uplift forces can be reduced by protecting piles with an OSPTReline (or Reline) polymer heat-shrinkable jacket. The interaction of heaving soil with a pile covered with the Reline jacket is modeled in laboratory to estimate the uplift force and the related shear strength of frozen soil along the soil-pile adfreeze surface at temperatures from −6 to −1 °C. The data are obtained for silty sand and silty clay soils and mortar (1:5 cement-sand mixture). The experiments show that frost-heave uplift forces on Reline-protected piles are 52% to 85% lower than on uncovered steel piles (steel grade 09G2S—analog to European steel grade S355JR), depending on soil type and temperature.