Frost heaving of soils is a well known phenomenon that affects infrastructure in cold regions, but the tools available to model the frost heave process are modest. Frost heave is a multi-scale process, with water freezing at the microscopic level, leading to formation of ice lenses at the meso scale, manifesting itself as the displacement of the ground surface at the macro scale. To capture the essence of the process, a porosity rate function (see figure) is introduced to describe the change in volume due to growth of the ice within the soil. The growth tensor is then used in the constitutive model of frost-susceptible soils. To illustrate the application of the model, it was implemented in the numerical system ABAQUS to simulate the frost heave in the neighborhood of a retaining wall with frost-susceptible backfill subjected to freezing (see figure). Soil freezing is a part of the freeze-thaw cycle, and this research continues with the focus on melting of ice lenses and thawing of frozen soils.