Tertiary creep model for frozen sands

An empirical model to describe the unconfined compressive creep behavior of frozen sands is developed. When combined with the proposed method for parameter evaluation, this model accounts for the effect of applied axial stress, ambient temperature and level of pore ice saturation and can be used reliably for data fitting and creep prediction. Comparisons indicate that this new tertiary creep model is more accurate and reliable than primary and secondary creep models.