water Article Case Study of Heat Transfer during Artificial Ground Freezing with Groundwater Flow Rui Hu 1,†, Quan Liu 2,*,† and Yixuan Xing 2 1 School of Earth Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Nanjing 211100, China;
[email protected] 2 Geoscience Centre, University of Göttingen, 37077 Göttingen, Germany;
[email protected] * Correspondence:
[email protected]; Tel.: +49-157-835-53628 † These authors contributed equally to this work. Received: 13 August 2018; Accepted: 21 September 2018; Published: 25 September 2018 Abstract: For the artificial ground freezing (AGF) projects in highly permeable formations, the effect of groundwater flow cannot be neglected. Based on the heat transfer and seepage theory in porous media with the finite element method, a fully coupled numerical model was established to simulate the changes of temperature field and groundwater flow field. Firstly, based on the classic analytical solution for the frozen temperature field, the model’s ability to solve phase change problems has been validated. In order to analyze the influences of different parameters on the closure time of the freezing wall, we performed the sensitivity analysis for three parameters of this numerical model. The analysis showed that, besides the head difference, the thermal conductivity of soil grain and pipe spacing are also the key factors that control the closure time of the frozen wall. Finally, a strengthening project of a metro tunnel with AGF method in South China was chosen as a field example. With the finite element software COMSOL Multiphysics® (Stockholm, Sweden), a three-dimensional (3D) numerical model was set up to simulate the change of frozen temperature field and groundwater flow field in the project area as well as the freezing process within 50 days.