Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to provide insights into the current practice, challenges and future development trends of intelligent compaction (IC) technology from a bibliometric perspective.Design/methodology/approach: A bibliometric analysis on IC-relevant studies is presented. Through this quantitative manner, insights into the current IC research practice and development trends have been derived from the perspectives of publications and citations, spatial distribution, knowledge construction, structural variations, existing problems, and conclusions and recommendations.Findings: Currently, IC applications are confronted with the issues of intelligent compaction measurement values (ICMVs) applicability, autonomous control, specifications and applications. To address the issues, three potential research directions are identified: a comprehensive ICMV measurement system that is designated for single layer analysis; autonomous control mechanisms with integrated management capabilities that can efficiently collaborate all stakeholders; and a standardized application workflow and the cost-benefit evaluation of IC in the context of the full life cycle.Research limitations/implications: The literature used in this paper is collected from the Web of Science. Although the database covers almost all the important publications in IC field, studies not indexed by the database are not considered.Originality/value: This research quantitatively analyzes the current IC practice and development trends from the perspectives of bibliometric analysis. It provides an overview of the knowledge construction and development of IC technology. The discussions about the problems and the suggested solutions can be useful for those interested in this field.

During earth-rock dam construction, temperature control to reduce the freeze–thaw impact on core-wall clay in cold regions is difficult. To address this challenge, this research developed a phase change material (PCM) incorporated into clay (PCM-clay) to improve the construction efficiency in a cold period. In the preparation of PCM-clay, considerable latent heat was stored by harvesting thermal energy from the environment, which was used for temperature control to extend the winter construction time. The feasibility of PCM-clay as core-wall clay was verified by an analysis of working performance. The results indicate that low-content PCM-clay (7%) is able to protect core-wall clay from freeze–thaw damage in a simulated environment (minimum $\mathrm{temperature}=-4.3°\mathrm{C}$ ) in a 1-day cycle. The working performance (e.g., shear strength and impermeability) supports that PCM-clay is a promising solution for temperature control of core-wall clay during earth-rock dam construction in cold regions.

An earth-rock dam is composed of multiple materials compacted by rollers with complex operation modes, which can easily lead to the abnormal fluctuation of harmonic-ratio-based roller-integrated compaction measurement values (HR-RICMVs). Without proper handling, the abnormal fluctuation would result in unreliable assessment of compaction quality. As an attempt to address the issue of abnormal fluctuation, this study presented an improved regression model for roller-integrated compaction assessment of earth-rock dam materials. The proposed model considered the effect of vibration frequency on HR-RICMVs under different operation modes. The applicability of the improved model was verified by an analysis of correlation and reliability in different earth-rock dam materials. The results indicate that the model has significant merits in the assessment of compaction quality under complex operation modes. This research provides a potential way for the compaction quality control of earth-rock dam materials based on HR-RICMVs in future studies.

In the simulation of concrete thermal stress fields, thermal parameters are crucial for calculating the concrete temperature field. In actual construction, due to the adjustment of the concrete mixing ratio and the changing external environment (temperature fluctuations, cooling conditions, solar radiation, thermal insulation measures, etc.), there are significant differences between the thermal parameters obtained in tests and the actual working conditions, which affect the simulation accuracy. Therefore, the inverse analysis of concrete thermal parameters under real working conditions can be carried out based on the measured temperature data. A method for inverse analysis of thermal parameters of arch dams using the walrus optimization algorithm (WaOA) is proposed. To verify the accuracy of the inversion parameters, twelve classical test functions are used to compare the three algorithms to evaluate their fitness. The efficiency difference is analyzed by nonparametric methods such as Fredman and Wilcoxon rank sum test. The results consistently indicate that the walrus optimization algorithm performs better. Furthermore, the WaOA is utilized for the parameter inversion of an arch dam in the downstream area of the Jinsha River. We bring the inversion results into different dam sections to calculate the temperature field during construction, which effectively verifies the efficient solution ability of the WaOA for the inverse analysis of concrete thermal parameters under complex engineering backgrounds.