Abstract: Self-adjusting lining canal can adapt to frost-heaving deformation. In order to explore its effect and mechanism of anti-frost heave, finite element software ADINA was applied to simulate canal heaving process, and calculate the temperature field, deformation field and stress field, and study the rules of lining plate about stresses and deformation. Compared with trapezoidal canal with curved slop toe, self-adjusting lining canal can reduce maximum normal frost heaving quantity by 55.11%, maximum normal frost-heave force by 51.65% and tangential adfreezing force by 56.85%. It also can make frost heaving distribution more uniform to reform stress states remarkably. Total normal dislocation value between lining plates is 1.3 cm and total circumferential compression value of longitudinal elastic joints is 9.7 cm. This fact demonstrates that self-adjusting lining canal can makes full use of the joints to release normal deformation and absorb the circumferential, which is the mechanism of anti-frost heave. Sensitivity analysis of mean square deviation of frost heaving quantity to slope ratio shows that the best effect of anti-frost heave will be achieved while setting slope ratio i between 1:1.7 and 1:1.4. These works will provide scientific reference for further application and optimization design of self-adjusting lining canal.