Seasonal freezing of a logging dirt road: modeling of conditions of transverse cracks emergence

There are a number of urgent tasks related to the forecasting of the state and improvement of technologies for the construction of temporary forest roads. In the present work, the object of the study is a two-layer structure as a model of a straight section (segment) of a dirt road in the stage of seasonal freezing. Conditions of occurrence and parameters of frost cracks in the upper layer of the road during seasonal freezing were simulated. The paper demonstrates the possibility of using mathematical modeling of mechanical systems to analyze the conditions of frost cracks formation in the soil. The considered problem is to predict the distance between frost cracks in the soil. Practical examples of numerical implementation of the proposed approach are presented. The research results confirm that the use of mathematical modeling methods in the problems associated with the analysis of the state of temporary logging roads is a relevant and promising direction; the developed method provides sufficient adequacy of the simulation results, does not require cumbersome calculations; the results of the study do not contradict the data known in the literature; the practical significance of the work is determined by the fact that the presented results can be used to justify technical solutions for improving winter logging roads; the prospects of the study are associated with the refinement of data on the interaction of the frozen soil layer interacting with the underlying soil layer, the temperature of which is non-negative.