ABAQUS-based research on the parameters of highway subgrade vibratory compaction and vibration wave propagation laws

Abstract

Vibratory rollers are generally used in the process of highway subgrade compaction. In the paper, the vibratory roller—subgrade finite element model was established to simulate the field construction by using ABAQUS. We used Hilbert–Huang Transform to analyze the compaction in the field test from the time–frequency domain. By changing the parameters of the vibratory roller and the filler, the comprehensive influence of the parameters such as the elastic modulus of the filler, rolling speed, excitation force, vibration frequency and thickness of the filler on the compaction quality of the subgrade was investigated. We studied the propagation pattern of vibration waves in three-dimensional space. The study shows that the signals of different frequency bands in the Hilbert spectrum represent the compaction degrees of fillers in different zones. The peak acceleration generally decreases with the increase of horizontal and vertical distance, but there is an increase at the boundary of the vibration field. There is an optimal combination of the excitation force, vibration frequency and thickness of the filler. The vibration waves propagate in the form of an ellipsoid in three dimensions, and the amplitude decreases with distance.