Ground freezing monitoring techniques

Ground-freezing is used in mining and civil engineering to make water-bearing strata temporarily impermeable and to increase their compressive and shear strength by transforming joint water and interstitial water into ice. Freezing of rock or soil layers is achieved by means of an array of cased boreholes, through which a cold liquid is circulated in order to remove heat energy, comparable to cooling coils.

Frost expansion from the boreholes into the ground is monitored, for a better and more economic control of the freezing process. For this purpose, instruments for the determination of borehole deviation, for measurement of the temperature field and for an assessment of the degree of freezing with ultrasonic waves, have proved useful. These three techniques are described based on results obtained from field measurements.