ANALYSES OF THE ENGINEERING COMPLEXITIES IN PERMAFROST REGIONS WITH THE QINGHAI-TIBET RAILWAY AND HIGHWAY AS EXAMPLE

The Qinghai-Tibet railway has a length of 550 km crossing the permafrost area. Along the line the permafrost ground temperature, frozen ground type and the ecological environment have great differences which make engineering and construction in the permafrost area become difficlt and complicated. So, this paper proposes a frozen ground engineering complexity concept, builds the evaluate model of frozen ground engineering complexity, and uses the GIS platform to analysis and research the engineering complexity of the Tangguola Mountain Crossing along the Qinghai-Tibet railway. The result indicates that engineering complexity of the area where the Qinghai-Tibet railway crosses is smaller than where the Qinghai-Tibet highway crosses. This situation shows that the frozen ground engineering along the Qinghai-Tibet highway is more complicated than that along the railway. Under the effect of various factors, the stability problems of the Qinghai-Tibet highway are much more complicated than that of the Qinghai-Tibet railway.