The influence of the depth of the ground water table on free field road traffic‐induced vibrations

Abstract

AbstractThis paper describes the influence of seasonal variations of the ground water table on free field traffic‐induced vibrations. The passage of a truck on two types of road unevenness is considered: a joint in a road pavement consisting of concrete plates and a speed bump with a sinusoidal profile. Free field vibrations are computed with a two‐step solution procedure, where the computation of the vehicle axle loads is decoupled from the solution of the road–soil interaction problem. The impedance of the soil is calculated using a boundary element method, based on the Green's functions for a dry layer on top of a saturated half‐space. It is demonstrated that, in the low‐frequency range of interest, wave propagation in the saturated half‐space can be modelled with an equivalent single phase medium as an alternative to Biot's poroelastic theory for saturated porous media. The relation between the free field velocity and the depth of the ground water table is dominated by three phenomena: (1) the compressibility of the soil decreases due to the presence of the pore water, (2) the ground water table introduces a layering of the soil which may cause resonance of the dry layer and (3) refracted P‐waves in the dry layer interfere with surface waves. If the depth of the ground water table is large with respect to the wavelength of the vibrations in the soil, the response tends to the response of a dry half‐space. The average free field velocity is equal to the velocity in the absence of ground water. If the depth of the ground water table is small with respect to the wavelength of the vibrations in the soil, the response tends to the response of a saturated half‐space and resonance of the dry layer does not occur. The average free field velocity is smaller than the velocity in the absence of ground water. The interference of refracted P‐waves and surface waves causes an additional oscillation of the response as a function of the excitation frequency and the distance between the road and the receiver. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.