A piecewise bearing capacity method of unstructured terrain considering characteristics of soil mechanic and wheel geometry. (June 2020)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Chen, Ding; Hou, Liang; Bu, Xiangjian; Chen, Yun
• Is Part Of: Journal of terramechanics. Volume 89(2020)
• Page Start: 13
• Page End: 20
• Publication Date: 2020-06
• Subjects: Unstructured terrain -- Soil bearing capacity -- Terzaghi theory -- Pressure-sinkage relationship; Trafficability -- Periodicals; Praticabilité (Routes) -- Périodiques; Trafficability; Periodicals; 629.222
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jterra.2020.01.002
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 0022-4898

Abstract

Highlights: The bearing characteristics of soils between flat plate and wheel are similar. General/local failure behaviors of soil can be reflected by deformation index in semi-empirical model. The geometry change on the contact area improves the prediction accuracy in low load region. The piecewise bearing capacity evaluation method show a good agreement with the experimental results. The fitting parameters in semi-empirical models are transformed into the basic soil mechanics properties. Abstract: Bearing capacity of the unstructured terrain considering the effects of the wheel geometry and soil mechanic properties is analyzed in this paper. Two-dimensional pressure-sinkage simulations are conducted to evaluate the degrees of similarity between the flat plate and wheel in terms of their ultimate bearing characteristics of Terzaghi theory. The results show that these degrees of similarity are mainly reflected in the soil in-depth direction and the corresponding failure behaviors. Based on the approximation of the ultimate bearing capacity between the wheel and flat plate, a piecewise bearing capacity evaluation method with the effects of the soil mechanic properties and three-dimensional wheel geometry is proposed. The pressure-sinkage values of the proposed model show a satisfactory agreement with the experimental ones. The proposed model performs better than the semi-empirical models, as it considers more soil bearing features and needs less fitting parameters to assess the unstructured terrain.