Thermal-mechanical Influences and Environmental Effects of Expressway Construction on the Qinghai-Tibet Permafrost Engineering Corridor

The Qinghai-Tibet Engineering Corridor (QTEC) is a strategic passage between Tibet and central China. In the past half century, several major projects have been built in this narrow corridor with vulnerable geoenvironment. Along with a new round of economic development of the Tibet autonomous region, some major linear projects including expressway, double-tracking railway, high voltage power transmission line have been incorporated into the national development planning within the corridor, and especially the expressway construction is imminent now. In the QTEC, permafrost is a controlling factor of geological environment, which will impose great restrictions on engineering construction. In turn, engineering construction will induce significant effects on permafrost geological environment. With more and more linear infrastructures crowding into the QTEC, the thermal interaction among permafrost engineering and engineering disturbance on permafrost thermal-mechanical regime will be more significant. With respect to this issue, a research program focusing on thermal-mechanical influences and environmental effects of expressway construction on the Qinghai-Tibet permafrost engineering corridor was started and supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China. In this paper, the research significance, key scientific issues, main research contents and goals of the program are introduced so as to provide some references for related researchers and engineers.