Analysis of random temperature field for freeway with wide subgrade in cold regions

In cold regions, the freeway with wide pavement has larger heat absorption area than the normal, resulting in more difficulties to ensure the stability of embankment. However, the conventional finite element methods for stability analysis are always deterministic, rather than taking random parameters and conditions into account. In this paper, using stochastic finite element methods, the parameters of boundary conditions are considered as random variables, and the random temperature fields for wide-subgrade freeway are obtained and analyzed. The results show that heat accumulation effect is obvious in the central section of subgrade and that the closer it is to the upper boundary of the roadbed, the greater the temperature variance is. Besides, both effects increase with time.