Abstract
Searching for economical and practical solutions to increase any transport substructure’s protection and stability is critical for ensuring the long-term viability and adequate load-bearing capacity. Piles are increasingly being used as an economical and environmentally sustainable solution to enhance the strength of soft subgrade soils on which embankments are raised. As per the available literature, there are two main strategies used to explain railway embankments’ performance: experimental approaches and numerical simulations on a broad scale. The purpose of this study is to examine the state-of-the-art literature on numerical modeling methods adopted to assess the performance of pile-supported rail embankments subjected to cyclic loading. The paper addresses the main results from various numerical methods to explain the appropriate mechanisms associated with the load deformation response. It also presents the key issues and drawbacks of these numerical methods concerning rail embankment development while outlining the specific shortcomings and research gaps relevant to enhanced future design and analysis.
Highlights
While most of the studies in the past were mainly focused on static loadings as per the authors’ knowledge, this paper aims to provide a critical review of the existing literature to investigate the fundamental principles of the underlying mechanisms and influence of piles beneath rail embankments under cyclic loading through numerical modeling
The authors observed that the soil arching ratio decreases with increasing the embankment fill height, increasing the pile material’s elastic modulus and decreasing the geosynthetic reinforcement’s tensile stiffness
Discrete element modeling (DEM) is a computational approach used for solving mathematical problems related to the material having discrete characteristics, such as granular material or many other geomaterials such as soils, rocks, and aggregates [88,89,90]
Summary
Transport Research Centre, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Sydney, NSW 2007, Australia;. CONSTRUCT-Geo, Faculty of Engineering, University of Porto, 4200-465 Porto, Portugal
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