Use of an artificial neural network model for estimation of unfrozen
water content in frozen soils
Abstract
A portion of pore water is typically in a state of unfrozen condition in
frozen soils due to the complex soil-water interactions. The variation
of the amount of unfrozen water and ice has a significant influence on
the physical and mechanical behaviors of the frozen soils. Several
empirical, semi-empirical, physical and theoretical models are available
in the literature to estimate the unfrozen water content (UWC) in frozen
soils. However, these models have limitations due to the complex
interactions of various influencing factors that are not well understood
or fully established. For this reason, in the present study, an
artificial neural network (ANN) modeling framework is proposed and the
PyTorch package is used for predicting the UWC in soils. For achieving
this objective, extensive UWC data of various types of soils tested
under various conditions were collected through an extensive search of
the literature. The developed ANN model showed good performance for the
test dataset. In addition, the model performance was compared with two
traditional statistical models for UWC prediction on four additional
types of soils and found to outperform these traditional models.
Detailed discussions on the developed ANN model, and its strengths and
limitations in comparison to different other models are provided. The
study demonstrates that the proposed ANN model is simple yet reliable
for estimating the UWC of various soils. In addition, the summarized UWC
data and the proposed machine learning modeling framework are valuable
for future studies related to frozen soils.