Abstract:

The duration of transportation facilities built on soft subsoil mainly depends on its permanent settlement caused by traffic loads. To predict this part of settlement, an empirical model suitable for saturated soft clay was proposed. A parameter was introduced in the description of residual volumetric strain to quantify the effect of different drainage conditions on deformation development. The influence of partial-drained condition in-situ on the development of residual volumetric strain and residual deviatoric strain was considered through taking residual volumetric strain as a hardening factor in the description of the model. A practical numerical approach was proposed to implement the empirical model in FEM, and corresponding codes named as ROAD2D were developed. The effectiveness of the model and corresponding codes were verified by analyzing an actual boundary value problem. It was found that the settlement of road under undrained conditions was larger, and the pattern of settlement was worse for pavement than under partial drained conditions.

Key words: traffic load, residual strain, settlement, empirical model, finite elements