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Innovative designs of permafrost roadbed for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway

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Abstract

Under global warming scenarios, the passive method of simply increasing the thermal resistance by raising the embankment height and using insulating materials has been proven ineffective in warm and ice-rich permafrost areas and therefore could not be used in the Qinghai-Tibet Railway engineering. Instead, a proactive “cooled-roadbed” approach was developed and used to lower the ground temperature in order to maintain a perennially frozen subgrade. The concept that local and site-specific factors play an important role in the occurrence and disappearance of permafrost has helped us to devise a number of measures to cool down the roadbed. For example, we adjust and control heat transfer by using different embankment configurations and fill materials. The Qinghai-Tibet Railway project demonstrates that a series of proactive roadbed-cooling methods can be used to lower the temperature of permafrost beneath the embankment and to stabilize the roadbed. These methods include solar radiation control using shading boards, heat convection control using ventilation ducts, thermosyphons, air-cooled embankments, and heat conduction control using “thermal semi-conductor” materials, as well as combinations of above mentioned three control measures. This roadbed-cooling approach provides not only a solution for engineering construction in sensitive permafrost areas but also a countermeasure against possible global warming.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. State Key Laboratory of Frozen Soil Engineering, Cold and Arid Regions Environmental and Engineering Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Lanzhou, 730000, China

    GuoDong Cheng, QingBai Wu & Wei Ma

Authors
  1. GuoDong Cheng
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  2. QingBai Wu
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  3. Wei Ma
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to GuoDong Cheng.

Additional information

Supported by the Knowledge Innovation Program of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Grant No. KZCX1-SW-04), the Outstanding Youth Foundation Project, and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 40625004)

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Cheng, G., Wu, Q. & Ma, W. Innovative designs of permafrost roadbed for the Qinghai-Tibet Railway. Sci. China Ser. E-Technol. Sci. 52, 530–538 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-008-0291-6

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-008-0291-6

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