A Technique for Producing Ice From NaCl Brine for Studying Fundamental Deformation Behavior

Abstract

The deformation behavior of frozen saline soils involves a complex interaction between non-deformable particles (soil) and a plastic solid (ice) containing a liquid phase (brine). In order to understand this, it is highly desirable to characterize the deformation behavior of the ice-brine system alone. However, preparation of ice-brine specimens suitable for laboratory testing is difficult because migration of brine during freezing produces inhomogeneous brine distributions. To overcome these difficulties, a liquid phase sintering technique has been developed to produce ice specimens from NaCl brine. The details of the process and the resulting microstructures are presented.