1928 / A Novel Soil Stress Estimation Method Of Wheel-Soil Interaction Using Photoelasticity

Authors

Kenji Nagaoka and Yuto Yoshida

Paper presented at ISTVS 2024 | 21st International and 12th Asia-Pacific Regional Conference of the ISTVS Keywords: Wheel-soil interaction; Soil stress distributions; Photoelastic method https://doi.org/10.56884/15YUPU08

Abstract

This paper proposes a new approach to understanding the wheel-soil interaction, which is an indirect estimation method of soil stress distributions beneath a traveling wheel soil using a photoelastic method. Thus far, in the conventional studies applying the photoelastic method to the wheel-soil terramechanics, the terrain has been emulated by photoelastic disks or plates, which enable visualization of internal stresses in the simulated terrain. In particular, the photoelastic disks have performed visualization of two-dimensional dynamic stress distributions of the simulated granular terrain. With this method, we have visualized and analyzed the dynamic force chain structure of the terrain under different wheel slip conditions. Still, it is difficult for the previous configuration to simulate the dynamic behaviors of natural soil, e.g., compaction, failure, or wheel ruts. Accordingly, achieving both the stress visualization and the dynamic behaviors of soil is a significant challenge to make the photoelastic method more practical. To cope with this challenging issue, we have developed a novel experimental setup consisting of a photoelastic wheel (top layer), soil (middle layer), and a photoelastic plate (bottom layer). By vertically sandwiching the soil between the photoelastic wheel and plate, the soil stresses can be indirectly estimated to satisfy the boundary stress conditions. To achieve this approach, we have conducted calibration tests of the photoelastic wheel and plate, and then identified the force vector and contact patch corresponding to the visualized stresses. In this paper, we demonstrate that it is possible to indirectly estimate how the stress propagates and attenuates in the soil by the proposed method.

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