Engineering quality assurance for construction ground freezing

Controlled ground freezing for mining and construction applications has been in use for over a century. Despite the great technological evolution which has occurred during this period, it still remains more of an art than a science. Both the ground freezing system and related frozen earth structure are, as a practical matter, indeterminate from the standpoint of accurate engineering computations. Because of this, the successful execution of a ground freezing project depends to a large extent on the personal experience of the individuals involved in its design and execution. The purpose of this paper is to present information on proven methods for accomplishing and verifying some of the most important construction operations used during installation and maintenance of a ground freezing system and related frozen earth structure. The data on which this paper is based are derived from records of numerous completed projects for which ground freezing was employed to provide temporary ground suppport groundwater control, and/or structural underpinning. Applications included shafts, tunnels, deep open excavations, underpinning, and emergency or remedial repair of other types of construction used in the same applications.

Based on the data studied, the paper concludes with some fundamental recommendations for applied research topics.