Ding Chen, Liang Hou, Xiangjian Bu, Yun Chen
Journal of Terramechanics, Volume 89, 2020, Pages 13-20, ISSN 0022-4898
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jterra.2020.01.002. (http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022489820300021)
Abstract: Bearing capacity of the unstructured terrain considering the effects of the wheel geometry and soil mechanic properties is analyzed in this paper. Two-dimensional pressure-sinkage simulations are conducted to evaluate the degrees of similarity between the flat plate and wheel in terms of their ultimate bearing characteristics of Terzaghi theory. The results show that these degrees of similarity are mainly reflected in the soil in-depth direction and the corresponding failure behaviors. Based on the approximation of the ultimate bearing capacity between the wheel and flat plate, a piecewise bearing capacity evaluation method with the effects of the soil mechanic properties and three-dimensional wheel geometry is proposed. The pressure-sinkage values of the proposed model show a satisfactory agreement with the experimental ones. The proposed model performs better than the semi-empirical models, as it considers more soil bearing features and needs less fitting parameters to assess the unstructured terrain.
Keywords: Unstructured terrain; Soil bearing capacity; Terzaghi theory; Pressure-sinkage relationship