YAKUTSK, October 5. /TASS/. Scientists in Yakutia designed an application which can calculate how stable are the buildings, built in the Arctic, against the threats caused by the permafrost’s degradation, said one of the authors, Sergey Stepanov of the North-Eastern Federal University’s laboratory for computer technologies in modeling multi-physics and multi-scale cryolithozone processes.

The "de-freezing" of soils has begun in the Arctic lately due to the warming. According to the Ministry of Education and Science, the degrading permafrost may affect mostly the regions, which are on the Arctic Circle and above it. Yakutia is one of them.

"A team of scientists and undergraduates at the North-Eastern Federal University has been working for a year to create the ArcticXpert application, which models the behavior of foundations in the changing climate conditions in the Arctic. Work on the software has finished. It will be helpful to predict stability of structures, built on the permafrost. The plan is to start testing the soft and to begin the certification formalities," the expert told TASS.

According to him, the application has been designed both for ordinary users, who do not have a special education, and for professional geologists and builders. "It is a regular application that contains all the necessary functions to forecast the soil temperature. Its feature and advantage is that the application uses modern computing technologies. We’ve focused on making computational algorithms: the users will receive simple tools to forecast quite accurately the soil temperature," the scientist explained.

Users do not need special skills in computing technologies to learn accurate forecasts, he added.

How application works

The software has been created under the federal program Priority-2030. The Far East. The application includes several components. They are: modules for setting parameters and configuration, for preparing geometry and for a grid generating, for calculating soils’ temperature regimes, plus processing results and visualization. "The most important result that can be achieved with this software is an option to model conditions of perennially frozen soils during a construction process in order to avoid disasters in the future," the scientist said.

"To speak briefly about the app’s ability - it solves thermal problems of the interaction between buildings and frozen foundations depending on the changing heat exchange on the surface, actual climate changes, technologies and timing of foundations, and cooling methods in two-dimensional and three-dimensional options. The application gives predictive calculations of foundations’ bearing capacity for buildings and structures erected on perennially frozen soils, taking into account time and duration of construction, design solutions, and used structures," he continued.

The soft takes into account the main natural factors (snow, wind, vegetation layer) and the determining engineering and geological factors that affect the design, condition, and operation of engineering structures. "For example, in civil and industrial construction, of great importance are the composition and properties of the ground, depths of groundwater and their aggressiveness. In transport construction - the relief and slopes, the composition and condition of rocks, unfavorable geological processes," the scientist explained.

Future use

The main cause of buildings deformation in Yakutia is the man-made impact on the permafrost, where its thermal state changes causing hazardous processes, which risk load-bearing structures’ deformation.

"Yakut scientists have found over recent decades that the average temperature in winter increases, and in summer, on the contrary, it decreases against earlier years," Stepanov said. "At the same time, this does not affect Yakutsk so much: the city mostly feels a strong anthropogenic impact. However, due to the climate changes, highly probably will suffer the Arctic regions, where big observation are not carried out."

Results of studies may be useful in industries, experts say. "This is due to the demand for them in the Arctic’s industrial development," the scientist said. "By using the application, specialists will solve problems at a higher level and will obtain accurate results that are necessary in practical issues, as the software offers a detailed consideration of physical processes in the specific Arctic conditions."

The Yakut State Design and Research Institute of Construction will be the first to use the ArcticXpert application. Joint tests with the institute are due to begin this autumn.