In areas of geotechnical engineering, artificial ground freezing is commonly
used as an effective way to deal with various ground construction challenges such as
groundwater control and temporary excavation support. For the description of the coupled
thermo-hydro-mechanical behavior of soil exposed to frost action, this paper presents a
three-phase Finite Element model of porous materials, consisting of solid skeleton, liquid
water and crystal ice, where the liquid phase contains both weakly-bound pore water
and strongly-bound water film. Within the theory of thermo-poroelasticity proposed by
Coussy [1, 2], poroelastic constitutive relations are provided from an energy approach of
poromechanics. In addition, the phase transition between water and ice is characterized by
a purely temperature-dependent thermodynamic state function named liquid saturation
degree considering the pore size distribution. The cryo-suction mechanism that induces
migration of water towards the frozen sites is impelled by the chemical potential difference
existing between the pre-melted water film and the adjacent pore water. By choosing solid
displacement, liquid pressure and mixture temperature as principal unknowns, the model
is implemented in a geometrically-linear Finite Element context base upon the governing
balance equations for the soil constituents and their mixture. The validation procedure
is shown by selected examples with analyses of different aspects of the model behavior
