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Frost Beneath and Exposed Culvert

1 Introduction
The objective of this analysis is to determine the frost penetration beneath an exposed concrete culvert
that is exposed to an average air temperature of -8.5 C over a period of two months. Two cases are
considered: 1) no snow cover on the ground surface; and, 2) 200 mm of snow cover on the ground
surface. The analysis demonstrates the insulating effect of snow, which has a lower thermal conductivity
and heat capacity due to the presence of air in the void space.

2 Numerical Model
Figure 1 presents the model geometry and stratigraphy. The foundation soil is 5.8 m thick. A 200 mm
thick region is placed at the top of the domain to model the snow pack for Case 2. A 150 mm thick
concrete culvert is constructed near the ground surface and extends to just over 700 mm depth. The
geology comprises a silty sand fill material overlying a sandy native soil material. The local water table
elevation is located just below the contact between the fill and native soil. For simplicity, the native soil
is assumed to be fully saturated. It should be noted that only half the domain could have been modeled in
this case, as the center-line of the culvert is also a line of symmetry.

Fill Concrete Fill

4
Elevation

Native Soil

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Distance
Figure 1 - Model geometry

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3 Material properties
A full-thermal material model was used for the fill and native soil materials. Figure 2 and Figure 3
present the thermal conductivity verses temperature function and normalized unfrozen water content
function, respectively. Both functions demonstrate that the thermal properties change over a narrow
temperature range below the phase change temperature. This phenomenon is a result of capillary forces
that hold the water in the void space of soils. The transition from an unfrozen material property to a
frozen material property occurs at a lower temperature for finer grained soils.

260

250
Thermal Conductivity (kJ/days/m/°C)

240

230 Fill

220

210

200
Native
190

180

170
-2 -1 0

Temperature (°C)

Figure 2 - Thermal conductivity function

0.8
Unfrozen Water Content (m³/m³)

Fill
0.6

0.4

Native

0.2

0
-2 -1 0

Temperature (°C)

Figure 3 - Normalized unfrozen water content function

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The water content for the fill material was assumed to be 18% by volume (~ 12% by weight) and the
native soil was assumed to be 40% by volume (~ 30% by weight). The volumetric heat capacity of both
soils was assumed to be 2700 kJ/m3/C for the unfrozen case and 2600 kJ/m3/C for the frozen case.
The concrete and snow were modeled using a simplified thermal model with constant thermal properties
in the frozen and unfrozen states. The snow was assumed to have a thermal conductivity of 31.1
kJ/day/m/C (0.36 W/m/K) with a heat capacity of 740 kJ/m3/C. The concrete thermal conductivity was
set at 155.5 kJ/day/m/C (1.8 W/m/K) with a heat capacity of 2600 kJ/m3/C.

4 Initial and Boundary Conditions

The initial conditions for both cases was established using a spatial function. The spatial function
assumed a temperature of 2.4 C near the surface, 9 C at a depth of 2m, and 5 C at the base of the model
(Figure 4).
6

4
Elevation

0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Distance
Figure 4 – Temperature contours for the spatial function

The bottom boundary condition for both analyses was set to a constant temperature of 5 C while the top
boundary is set to a temperature of -8.5 C for the duration of the analysis. In the first case, the boundary
condition is applied to the top of the fill and culvert. In the second case, the snow material has been
applied to the upper region, so the boundary is applied to the top of the domain.

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5 Results and Discussion

Temperature contours and the location of the freezing front after 67 days for Case 1 and 2 are presented in
Figure 5. The depth of the freezing front along the edges of the domain has propagated approximately
1.6 m and 1.2 m below ground for the case without snow and with snow, respectively. The reduced
freezing depth for Case 2 demonstrates the insulating effect of the snow, which has a thermal conductivity
approximately 10% to 20% of the soil conductivity. There is no snow pack within the culvert; so the
freezing depth is about the same in both cases at the line of symmetry.

Figure 5 - Temperature contours and location of freezing front after 67 days

Figure 6 presents a plot of temperature verses time beneath the culvert (1 m below ground surface) for the
case that includes the snow pack. The temperature drops very rapidly as heat flow towards the freezing
boundary. Eventually, the steep thermal gradient between the ground surface and the warmer

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temperatures within the domain begins to diminish as the freezing front propagates downward. As a
result, the upward thermal flux reduces and the cooling rate diminishes.

T vs Time at 1mdepth
6

4
Temperature (°C)

-2

-4

-6
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70

Time (days)

Figure 6 - Temperature vs time beneath the culvert for case 2

6 Summary and Conclusions

TEMP/W is used to model the effect of snow pack on the propagation of a freezing front over a period of
two months. The analysis demonstrates the significant insulating effect of snow, which has a much lower
thermal conductivity and heat capacity compared to soil. The lack of snow cover over the culvert results
in little change in frost depth in this region.

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