Long-term Settlement of High Speed Railway Embankment Compacted under Dry/Wet Condition

고속철도 토공구간 쌓기 재료의 다짐함수비 조건에 따른 장기침하 특성

Recently, the high speed railway comes into the spotlight as the important and convenient traffic infrastructure. In Korea, Kyung-Bu high speed train service began in about 400km section at 2004, and the Ho-Nam high speed railway will be constructed by 2017. The high speed train will run with a design maximum speed of 300-350km/hr. Since the trains are operated at high speed, the differential settlement of subgrade under the rail is able to cause a fatal disaster. Therefore, the differential settlement of the embankment must be controlled with the greatest care. Furthermore, the characteristics and causes of settlements which occurred under construction and post-construction should be investigated. A considerable number of studies have been conducted on the settlement of the natural ground over the past several decades. But little attention has been given to the compression settlement of the embankment. The long-term settlement of compacted fills embankments is greatly influenced by the post-construction wetting. This is called 'hydro collapse' or 'wetting collapse'. This wetting collapse problem for the compressibility of compacted sands, gravels and rockfills, has been recognized by several researchers. For this wetting settlement problem, we showed the test results carried out with 4 fill materials. These tests were performed under the condition that the fill materials were inundated at the first wetting. Subsequently, in this study, we investigated the long-term settlement characteristics of the fill materials under the repeated partial wetting and rising of the ground water table happend by rainfall.