Modelling in FEM the soil pressures distribution caused by a tyre on a Rhodic Ferralsol soil

Omar González Cueto, Ciro E. Iglesias Coronel, Elvis López Bravo, Carlos A. Recarey Morfa, Miguel Herrera Suárez
Journal of Terramechanics, Volume 63, February 2016, Pages 61-67, ISSN 0022-4898, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jterra.2015.09.003
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022489815000877
Abstract:
Tyre traffic over soil causes non-uniform ground pressures across the tyre width and along the soil–tyre contact area. The objective of this paper was to obtain in the topsoil the shape, magnitudes, distribution and transmission in depth of the ground pressures from a finite element model of soil compaction. The influence of tyre inflation pressure, tyre load and soil water content over the pressures propagation in the soil was analysed. The model shows how to low inflation pressure the tyre carcass supports most of the total load and the biggest peak pressures are distributed in the tyre axes when it traffics over firm soil. For high inflation pressure the incremented stiff causes that pressure is distributed with parabolic shape. In wet soil the inflation pressure does not influence on the ground pressure distribution, this depends only on the tyre load. The inflation pressure and tyre load changed the shape of the vertical pressures distribution on the surface of a hard dry soil, but these variables did not affect the distribution of vertical stresses in a soft wet soil or below a depth of 0.15 m.
Keywords: Ground pressure; Tyre–soil interaction; FEM; Rhodic Ferralsol soil