Numerical simulation of thawing process in frozen soil

We present a slightly abridged and adapted translation of the paper “Numerical simulation of thawing process in frozen soil” by Chinese researchers (Yan et al., 2020). It was published in the peer-reviewed journal “Geofluids” by the Hindawi publishing company. It is an open access article under the CC BY license that allows it to be distributed, translated, adapted, and supplemented, provided that the types of changes are noted and the original source is referred to. In our case, the full reference to the original paper (Yan et al., 2020) used for the presented translation is given in the end. Permafrost has been thawing faster due to climate change, which would release greenhouse gases, change the hydrological regimes, affect buildings above, and so on. It is necessary to study the thawing process of frozen soil. A water-heat coupling model for frozen soil thawing is established on Darcy’s law and Heat Transfer in Porous Media interfaces in Comsol Multiphysics 5.5. Three curves of total liquid water volume, minimum temperature, and total heat flux in the thawing process are obtained from the numerical simulation. The distributions of liquid water, temperature, and pressure based on time are simulated too. The liquid water distribution is consistent with the total liquid water volume curve. The temperature distribution is confirmed by the minimum temperature and total heat flux curve. The pressure distribution represents ice in the frozen soil that generates negative pressure during the melting process. The numerical simulation research in this article deepens the understanding of the internal evolution in the process of frozen soil thawing and has a certain reference value for subsequent experimental research and related applications.