Fully-Mobilized Soil Arching versus Partially-Mobilized Soil Arching

Abstract

Soil arching is a phenomenon describing stress re-distribution due to relative movement between adjoining portions. It commonly exists when soil interacts with infrastructure, for example, tunnels, retaining walls, buried structures, and pilesupported earth structures. A yielding state of soil (i.e., the shear stress in soil is equal to its shear strength) was mostly assumed in analytical models for soil arching. In reality, shear stress in the soil medium depends on the magnitude of relative movement of the soil. When the shear stress in the soil is equal to its shear strength, the soil arching is fully-mobilized, while soil arching is partially-mobilized when the shear stress is lower than its shear strength. In this study, the data obtained both from the experimental tests and the numerical modeling in the literature were used to evaluate the fully and partially mobilized soil arcing effects. The comparison of the data and the calculated results using two common analytical methods demonstrates the importance of understanding and considering the partially-mobilized soil arching under certain conditions.