An improved method for slab track-soil interaction considering soil surface deformation

Abstract

The additional deformation of slab track structure subject to arbitrary soil deformation, and subsequently the dynamic deformation coordination between the track and the soil due to a moving vehicle are of significant importance in the analysis of vehicle-track-soil (VTS) interactions. In this work, the finite element modeling and numerical iterative method are presented to compile a simulation program to reveal the deformation coordinated process of slab track-soil interaction reasonably, where the contact-separation relationship at the slab track-soil interface, the interlayered gap between slab track and soil surface, and additional track deformation are derived as additional geometric excitations of VTS interaction system. In numerical studies, different slab track types considering the unit and the longitudinal connected base plates are taken as illustrative and comparative examples, where the deformation coordinated mechanism of slab track-soil interaction and its influence on vehicle-induced vibrations are clarified.

Keywords:

• Vehicle-track-soil interaction
• finite element method
• slab track system
• iterative method

Author contribution

Zheng Li: Investigation, Methodology, Software, Formal analysis, Writing-original draft, Funding acquisition. Lei Xu: Conceptualization, Software, Writing-review & editing, Funding acquisition, Project administration.

Disclosure statement

The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this article.

Ethical approval

All procedures performed in the work involved no human or animal participants.

Data availability statement

All data, models, or code that support the findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 52008404; U1934217); Science and Technology Research and Development Program Project of China railway group limited (Major Special Project, NO.: 2020-Special-02); the National Natural Science Foundation of Hunan Province (Grant No. 2022JJ20071; 2021JJ30850); the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities of Central South University (No. 2021zzts0769); Project of State Key Laboratory of Mechanical Behavior and System Safety of Traffic Engineering Structures (KF2022-09).