Frozen soil is multi-phrase compound material which contains many holes and defects, and its fracture failure process has the same nonlinear characteristic as rock and concrete. This paper presented a cementation stress crack model for automatic simulation of discrete crack propagation in frozen soil. The discrete crack was modeled on the basis of the cementation stress crack concept using nonlinear interface elements with an exponential tensile softening constitutive law. The crack growth criterion is controlled by the maximal strain energy release rate. The propagation process of the crack was calculated with both automatic remeshing and nodal stress relaxation methods. The numerical simulations of the predicted cracking propagation process, including the propagation conditions and path, were proposed under mode-I and mixed-mode fracture of frozen soil. The numerical simulation results obtained were in close agreement with experimental observations.
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