Modeling frost heave in silty soils

Crystallization of water in confinement differs significantly from its behavior in bulk. Depending on the size of the confinement, water can freeze at lower temperatures relative to the bulk freezing temperature. Crystallization in confinement also applies a pressure on the surrounding pore structure, called the crystallization pressure. This crystallization pressure is responsible for various phenomena ranging from damage caused by freezing thaw cycles in cement, salt crystallization in porous structures, and frost heave. Numerical modeling of crystallization in porous structures involves coupled modeling of liquid transport, its crystallization, and the interaction of the growing crystal with the surrounding pore structure. In this work, we build a model to study crystallization of water in silty soil with the aim of studying frost heave. We couple a Phase Field Model for ice crystallization with a Discrete Element Method to model the behavior of soil particles. Our results show that we can qualitatively capture the phenomenon of frost heave in silty soils.