1.

Hello everyone, my name is Mike Uduebor and I’m giving a presentation on Engineered Water
Repellency in Frost Heave Mitigation.
2. Cold weather and frost conditions particularly during the winter affect the performance of roads. We
factor in the resultant effects of freezing and thawing into our design to account for changes in
moisture content, stress and strain of the underlying soil. Problems associated with these show up as
heaving and thaw weakening which both make roads difficult to use and ultimately leads to failure
under excessive loading respectively.
3. The three elements necessary for frost heave are:

A. Frost susceptible soil (significant amount of fines),

B. Subfreezing temperatures (freezing temperatures must penetrate the soil) and,
C. Water (must be available from either the groundwater table or held within the voids of fine-
grained soil).

In North Carolina, this can be especially relevant in roads along north facing slopes in the Blue Ridge
mountains region. Freezing conditions initially create a freezing front, which gradually grows into an ice
lens supplied by water held within the saturated soil or the water table below. The gradual growth of
the ice lens upwards causes a heave in the soil and subsequent road failure.
4. These annually occurring bashing of the road pavement structure (Just like Bluto and Pop Eye) leads to
recurring maintenance expenses that take away funds from much needed aspects of the economy.
5. This recurrent annual maintenance is estimated at over 2 billion dollars, asides other economic impacts
due to vehicle damage, toad closures and load restrictions.
6. Engineered Water Repellency is a technique gradually gaining ground in Civil Engineering Applications
with varying potential applications from slopes, containment systems to mention a few and basically
involves a process of making water hydrophobic by combining soils with cost-effective and
environmentally compatible polymers and other complex organic molecules. (More or less like Pop Eye
Taking a can of Spinach) This ability to limit the availability of water in the soil becomes invaluable for
making frost susceptible soils less prone to frost action
7. And while we all want it to look like this (Pop Eye and Bluto Fighting), it is actually more like this (Olive
separating pop eye and Bluto), by preventing the flow of water into the freezing front, we can prevent
the development or growth of an ice lens.
8. This is a joint research between UNCC and MSU, funded by the US NSF and includes lab, field and
numerical studies.
9. So far, we’ve been able to work on selecting a few products based on the following considerations
10. We’ve also been doing some work on Treatment Effectiveness, by contact angle measurements
coupled with the Water Drop Penetration Testing which are good indices for establishing the level of
hydrophobicity of soils
11. We’ve also been working on some modelling, trying to get a good look into the coupled processes that
make for the formation of freezing fronts, ice lensing and generally the whole works (thermo-hydro-
mechanical (THM) system to fully understand how OS treatment will affect the properties of soils
12. Also, work is going on in determining the effect of treatment in the Diffuse Double layer Thickness of
Soil measured using the Bulk Electrical Conductivity. The goal is to be able to decouple the mode of
transport of water within freezing soils particularly to the freezing front and important part of the
formation of ice lenses which cause heaving. We need to define whether it is osmotic, matric or both
and their relative proportions. Hopefully, we will be able to gain some insights into how to mitigate
frost heave damage to road pavements and associated infrastructure.
13. We are constantly sharing updates on our work, feel free to stop by and have a look at what we are up
to. Thank you for listening