Mohammad Khosravi
Montana State University, MT·Engineering
Permafrost, ground that stays frozen year-round in cold regions, is thawing quickly as the climate warms. This threatens buildings, roads and ecosystems across Arctic and sub-Arctic areas.
- Fields
Engineering
Earth & Environmental Science
- Topics
permafrost
frozen soil
climate change
- Grants
- 1 known grant, through Sep 2027
What they work on
- Determine how microstructural features such as grain size, ice content and void structure control the large-scale mechanical properties of permafrost, using X-ray computed tomography imaging of frozen soil.
- Measure how temperature, degree of saturation, mechanical load and strain rate affect the thermo-mechanical behavior of permafrost and frozen soil in laboratory experiments.
- Simulate long-term climate change effects on permafrost stability and deformation on an accelerated timescale, using geotechnical centrifuge testing at the NHERI UC Davis Center for Geotechnical Modeling.
- Link microscale and large-scale behavior with coupled discrete element and finite element (DEM-FEM) models, validated against imaging and centrifuge data to predict permafrost thaw.
More about the research
Yet it remains hard to predict how permafrost will behave as it warms over time. This collaborative project examines frozen soil at many scales, from tiny ice crystals to whole landscapes, to learn how its internal structure controls its strength and deformation as it thaws.
Why it matters
Thawing permafrost damages roads, buildings and ecosystems in Arctic and sub-Arctic regions. Better predictions of how frozen soil weakens and deforms as it warms could help engineers and planners design and protect infrastructure in cold regions as the climate changes.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Alexander Kholodov
University of Alaska Fairbanks, AK·Earth & Environmental Science
Measure long-term active-layer thickness, ground temperature and thaw subsidence at standardized sites along three climatic and ecological transects in northern Alaska, and compare how site conditions control seasonal thaw.
William Likos
University of Wisconsin-Madison, WI·Engineering
Formulate a theory based on a generalized soil water potential, combining capillarity and adsorption, that predicts pore water pressure and ice formation in freezing soil.
David Harbor
Washington and Lee University, VA·Earth & Environmental Science
Run scaled flume experiments on fractured rock blocks to measure how rock mass properties and flow conditions together control when hydraulic plucking begins.
The school
Montana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $258M a year on research, 85 research doctorates a year.
Reach out
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