The investigation of load-bearing capacity of soil base for oil pipeline depending on local geocryological conditions

Abstract

Weak thawing soils around the metal piles pose the main danger when constructing oil pipelines or other engineering structures located in the cryolithozone. The occurrence of ice inside soil causes thermokarst dips and settlement while thawing. High-precision calculations of the load-bearing capacity of soils and accurate forecasts of the amount of thawing in summer are necessary for improving the reliability of engineering structures. Thermopiles are used to prevent thawing of soils around piles and thermally stabilize the permafrost condition. In this article, one of such decisions is considered on the example of oil pipeline along «Kuyumba – Taishet Kozmino» route in Russia. There are permafrost and deformations of the soil body in the base of oil pipeline. The proposed method implies the joint operation of holding soils in frozen state with help of season-cooling devices or thermopiles. It was concluded that special geotechnical engineering for permafrost projects is necessary to avoid the main problems. In order to achieve the goals of the present investigation, the geotechnical software complex «FEM-models» with «Termoground» was used.