Vibration analysis of pile-supported embankments under high-speed train passage

Soft ground improvement using piles has increasingly been used as a rapid construction technique for railway and highway embankments over soft soil areas. While most studies conducted so far have addressed only issues of stability and settlement of pile-supported embankments under static loading, very limited attention has been paid to understanding their behaviors under transient loading of moving vehicles. In this study, vibration behaviors of this embankment system under high-speed train passage are investigated through three-dimensional finite element simulation. They include (1) characteristics of the surface wave field at high train speeds, (2) the dependence of vibration amplitude on the train speed and the phenomenon of critical speed, and (3) response at some typical locations in the system when the train moves at the critical speed. The study shows that there are breaks in the simulated wave fronts as transiting between different materials due to the difference in the Rayleigh wave speed among the materials relative to the train speed, and that the increase in train speed is accompanied by the increase in phase shift between the train load and the displacement pattern beneath the load. It is shown that the critical speed of the system is governed by the embankment, instead of the soft soil as commonly observed in previous studies in which the ground is not improved. Namely the vibration amplitude is maximally amplified when the train speed approaches the characteristic Rayleigh wave speed of the embankment material. In addition, the results also suggest that the sloping surfaces on the ballast and embankment along with the piles form a ‘trapping’ effect by which most of the train-induced waves, especially higher-frequency waves, incident to the sloping surfaces are trapped and dissipated within the pile-supported embankment system, and thus significantly reducing vibration amplitudes outside the embankment.