A two‐dimensional frost‐heave model for buried pipelines

Abstract The rigid‐ice model of frost heave is one of the most comprehensive frost‐heave models but is restricted to one‐dimensional cases in its present form. In this paper, the model is extended to two‐dimensional problems. The complete formulation of the partial differential equations governing heat, moisture and ice transport in freezing soils is provided. The equations are subsequently solved using the Galerkin finite element method in space and the finite difference method in time. A computer program is developed for the two‐dimensional rigid‐ice model. A case of freezing around chilled gas pipeline is solved and the numerical results are compared with experimental values, with good agreement between the two sets of results.