Numerical Analysis of the Embankment Suffering Heavy Asymmetric Traffic Load

Abstract

The behavior of the pavement is highly dependent on the deformation and stability of the underlying embankment. To optimize the design of embankment suffering heavy asymmetric traffic load in Shanxi province, China, a series of two-dimensional (2D) numerical analyses were conducted using the finite element software PLAXIS to investigate the deformation and slope stability of the unreinforced, geosynthetic reinforced, and expanded polystyrene (EPS) geofoam reinforced embankments. The results show that the general performance in the geosynthetic reinforced case is thought to be superior compared to that in the EPS geofoam reinforced case taking the slope stability into consideration. As the asymmetric traffic load increases, the embankment deformation increases significantly and obvious decrease of the slope stability safety factor is also observed. Great attention need to be paid to the influence of the heavy asymmetric traffic load.