Numerical simulation of the progressive development of soil arching in column-supported embankments

The soil arching mechanism is partly responsible for the transfer of stresses away from the soft subsoil and towards the relatively stiff column heads in column-supported embankments. Experimental studies have shown that the load transfer resulting from soil arching evolves progressively with increasing subsoil settlement. Past numerical studies exploring soil arching in column-supported embankments have typically not been able to capture this progressive development of load transfer. A series of improvements on past numerical studies are outlined that allow for improved simulation of the soil arching mechanism in column-supported embankments. These improvements include implementation of a strain-softening constitutive model, non-local integral type regularization and the application of the arbitrary Lagrangian– Eulerian finite element method. The benefits of these improvements are observed through comparison of simulation results to recent experimental studies of column-supported embankments. The comparison indicates that these techniques allow key aspects of soil arching kinematics and mechanics to be captured.