Multiphysics Simulation of the Effects of Wicking Geotextile on Mitigating Frost Effects on Cold Region Pavement

Geotextile has numerous benefits in improving pavement performance such as drainage, barrier, filtration, and reinforcement. Wicking geotextile is a relatively new geotextile product with the ability to autogenously drain water from soils. This paper introduces the development and implementation of a multiphysics model to simulate the performance of wicking geotextile in pavement system subjected to freezing climate. A variety of environmental effects are taken into account through specific boundary condition settings, from which various climatic factors, ground water level, ground heat, and drainage influence on the system can be captured and simulated by the model. The simulation results are first validated with field data from long-term pavement performance (LTPP) road section in cold region. The validated model is further utilized to analyze the impact of geotextile on the same LTPP section. The simulated results shows that wicking geotextile can generate suction concentration around its installation location, reduces the overall unfrozen water content in pavement, decreases the magnitude of frost heave, postpones the time of frost heave initiation, and has insignificant effect on frost depth.