Research institutions dealing with cold regions science and technology in Harbin, Heilongjiang province of China

Dr. Daisuke Kuroiwa (former Director of the Institute of Low Temperature Science, Hokkaido University, Japan) visited Harbin, Beijing, Lanzhou and Xian in China by invitation of the Chinese Academy of Science and the Japan Society of Promotion of Science from 4 2 0 October 1981. The major purpose of this trip was to visit research institutions dealing with cold regions sdence and technology and to attend the Second Chinese Conference on Permafrost which was held in Lanzhou, 12-18 October 1981. Since detailed information on the latter conference has been published by two attendees, J. Brown and Y.-C. Yen, as CRREL Special Report 82-3, 1982, this short note gives some information on research into frost-heaving and frozen ground which is being conducted in several institutes in Harbin, Heilongjiang Province. Harbin is the capital of the province, it is an industrial city with a population of approximately two million people. The latitude of this city is 45.5 ° North and the climate in winter is very cold. The average values of air temperature and precipitation taken over three months in mid-winter are -16.6°C and 5 mm, respectively, but the annual mean air temperature is +3.3°C because of fairly high values in summer. The severe cold and low values of precipitation in winter create seasonal freezing of soils. The permafrost in Heilongjiang province is unevenly distributed in the mountainous regions of DaHinggan Ling and near the border between the U.S.S.R. and China. In the: Harbin area, the surface soil consists of silt containing about 20% clay, but lower layers 15 m below the surface are composed of fine sand which was deposited by old floods of the Songhua Jiang. The level of ground water is usually 80-90 cm from the surface, but it descends below 1 m in depth when the surface soft begins to freeze in early November. The freezing of soil lasts until early April and the thickness of frozen ground reaches a maximum of 170-200 em depth around March 20th. The surface soil starts melting at the beginning of April and frost completely disappears around June 20th. On October 6th Dr. Kuroiwa arrived at Harbin Airport where it was sleeting slightly, but he was warmly welcomed by Mr. Xu Shaoxin, the director of the Water Conservancy Research Institute. Mr. Xu Shaoxin first took Dr. Kuroiwa to the Harbin Architectural and Civil Engineering Institute, to show research activities on frozen ground. This Institute consists of five departments: architecture, building engineering, city construction, building materials and mechanical, including electrical sections. In 1959 the institute detached from the parent institute, Harbin Institute of Technology, to become an independent organization. It has 1728 undergraduate students and 58 postgraduates, with a faculty of 560, including nearly 90 professors. Many studies on how to protect buildings from severe cold and frost-hearings of soil have been conducted in conjunction with the education and training of students and engineers. In the cold room of this institute, experiments on brittle failure, on fatigue of reinforcing steel bars and on frost-heaving force under applied pressure have been performed. There are major research institutions on cold regions sdance and technology in Harbin: the Low Temperature Construction Research Institute, the Architectural Materials Science Research Institute and the Water Conservancy Science Research Institute. These institutes are attached directly to Heilong-