Experimental Study On Temperature Distribution Law Of Embankment In Loess Areas

Loess has a wide distribution in China, and there are large numbers of basicengineering facilities built in the loess areas every year. Therefore, it is of greatsignificance to carry out the project stability and durability influencing factors in theloess region. Temperature field impacts the moisture field, the stress field, and thedeformation field significantly. Although the influence of temperature variation onengineering facilities could not be observed immediately, its long-term circulatingdamages to the stability and durability of the facilities should not be ignored. Thus it isquite necessary to carry out the study on temperature-changing laws in loess areas. Toprovide enough data of temperature field’s impacts on the internal stress anddeformation of the embankment in loess areas for such studies, the author carried anin-depth research on the variation and distribution of various temperature fields inembankment of different materials.With temperature sensors buried in the test section of the loess embankment andstone embankment, temperature variation and its distribution law could be monitored inreal-time. In this way, we can clearly understand the temperature field within theembankment and natural ground. Through the analysis of the data distribution lawreflected in the temperature-time coordinate system at different depth of these places,the depth of the embankment impacted by daily cycle and seasonal variations ofatmospheric temperature and solar radiation could be obtained.Through the analysis, it is found that the temperature-time variation law inside theembankment soil shows a cosine curve linear. With increasing depth, the entire linearmoves backward, and the minimum temperature is increasing, the maximumtemperature is decreasing, while the change in the range is constantly smaller. Theimpacted depths of daily cycles of atmospheric temperature and solar radiationvariations in the temperature fields in different types of embankment are: about0.8m inthe loess embankment and about1.6m in the stone embankment. The impacted depthsof seasonal variation cycles of atmospheric temperature and solar radiation in thetemperature fields in different types of embankment are: about6-8m in the loessembankment and over10m in the stone embankment. A comparison of the temperaturedistribution differences on both sides of the embankment indicates that the north-southtrend of route has no decisive influence on the sunny and cloudy slope effects oftemperature field in the embankment.Studies on the variation laws of the temperature field in the embankment majorfactors affecting it help to build a prediction model for the trend of the embankment temperature field. Consequently, temperature of the embankment at each moment couldbe predicted accurately, which would provide some foundation for further study ontemperature’s impacts on the embankment stress and deformation.