Numerical modelling of railway ballast at the particle scale
Numerical modelling of railway ballast at the particle scale
The paper describes the development of a technique to simulate triaxial tests on specimens of railway ballast numerically at the particle scale and its validation with reference to physical test data. The ballast particles were modelled using potential particles and the well-known discrete element method. The shapes of these elemental particles, the particle size distribution and the number of particles (N = 2800) in each numerical triaxial specimen all matched closely to the real ballast material being modelled. Confining pressures were applied to the specimen via a dynamic triangulation of the outer particle centroids. A parametric study was carried out to investigate the effects on the simulation of timestep, strain rate, damping, contact stiffness and inter-particle friction. Finally, a set of parameters was selected that provided the best fit to experimental tri- axial data, with very close agreement of mobilized friction and volumetric strain behaviour.
713-737
Ahmed, S.
8946ec30-34fd-4a8a-b3e9-89f326b57251
Harkness, J.
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Le Pen, L.
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Powrie, W.
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Zervos, A.
9e60164e-af2c-4776-af7d-dfc9a454c46e
10 April 2016
Ahmed, S.
8946ec30-34fd-4a8a-b3e9-89f326b57251
Harkness, J.
026f02e8-41d9-403f-83be-0d880058ecf1
Le Pen, L.
4a38e256-d113-4bba-b0d4-32d41995928a
Powrie, W.
600c3f02-00f8-4486-ae4b-b4fc8ec77c3c
Zervos, A.
9e60164e-af2c-4776-af7d-dfc9a454c46e
Ahmed, S., Harkness, J., Le Pen, L., Powrie, W. and Zervos, A.
(2016)
Numerical modelling of railway ballast at the particle scale.
International Journal for Numerical and Analytical Methods in Geomechanics, 40 (5), .
(doi:10.1002/nag.2424).
Abstract
The paper describes the development of a technique to simulate triaxial tests on specimens of railway ballast numerically at the particle scale and its validation with reference to physical test data. The ballast particles were modelled using potential particles and the well-known discrete element method. The shapes of these elemental particles, the particle size distribution and the number of particles (N = 2800) in each numerical triaxial specimen all matched closely to the real ballast material being modelled. Confining pressures were applied to the specimen via a dynamic triangulation of the outer particle centroids. A parametric study was carried out to investigate the effects on the simulation of timestep, strain rate, damping, contact stiffness and inter-particle friction. Finally, a set of parameters was selected that provided the best fit to experimental tri- axial data, with very close agreement of mobilized friction and volumetric strain behaviour.
Text
Rail_ballast_DEM_paper_FINAL_DRAFT_14052014.pdf
- Author's Original
Text
Numerical modelling of railway ballast at the particle scale with figures.pdf
- Accepted Manuscript
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Accepted/In Press date: 30 July 2015
e-pub ahead of print date: 9 September 2015
Published date: 10 April 2016
Organisations:
Infrastructure Group
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Local EPrints ID: 381538
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/381538
ISSN: 1096-9853
PURE UUID: a3ffd350-6f84-4347-adc1-8fbdccfce1b4
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Date deposited: 15 Sep 2015 13:36
Last modified: 15 Mar 2024 03:24
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Author:
S. Ahmed
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