ABSTRACT
Frozen soils show rheological behavior which results in changing mechanical properties in time under applied load. It is highly complicated to determine the long-term strength of a frozen soil. Rheological behavior of frozen soils appears in creep or stress relaxation. This paper presents a new method to measure long-term strength of frozen soils using CPT equipment named Stress Relaxation Test (SRT). Conventional tests are focused on the creep behavior by creating constant loads and measuring strains. The SRT is based on stress relaxation approach by creating constant deformations and measuring stress by a cone. Cone resistance (qc) would give compression long-term strength, as for sleeve friction (fs) – shear long-term strength. SRT long-term strength results can be applied directly to pile bearing capacity estimation. A comparison between such estimation and results from a full scale static pile load test is provided in the paper.
