The effect of stone columns on critical speed for high-speed railway lines
The effect of stone columns on critical speed for high-speed railway lines
When high-speed railway lines have to cross soils with lower propagation velocities, several geotechnical challenges arise, one of these being related to the critical speed. In this scenario, soil reinforcement is usually necessary, one of the most common materials for doing this being stone columns. Regarding the track settlements, there are several approaches to quantifying the settlement reduction factor which are frequently applied in practical engineering. Nevertheless, the effect of soil reinforcement on critical speed has received scarce attention in the scientific community. For this reason, this research focuses on the enhancement of critical speed in high-speed ballasted railway tracks produced by stone columns. To this end, different geotechnical scenarios were considered, computing the critical speed with a 3D elastodynamic numerical model for each one of them and further analysing the effectiveness of the reinforcement technique adopted. The results show that the enhancement of the critical speed is greater for a high column/soil stiffness ratio, whereas the depth of the stone columns also plays an important role although a critical length has been found, from which the critical speed remains constant.
Jesus Fernandez-Ruiz; Marina Miranda; Jorge Castro; Luis Medina; Alexandre Castanheira-Pinto
10th European Conference on Numerical Methods in Geotechnical Engineering (NUMGE2023)
11. Reinforcements and ground improvement
https://doi.org/10.53243/NUMGE2023-133
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