Cumulative plastic deformation for fine-grained subgrade soils

Improvements to existing methods in the literature have been made for predicting cumulative plastic deformation for fine-grained subgrade soils. The soil deviator stress, number of stress applications, soil physical state, and soil type are considered. The improved method incorporates multilevels of deviator stresses and multisoil physical states that result from load-level variations, as well as seasonal and weather changes throughout traffic. Measurements of plastic deformation for a railroad-track subgrade are presented and show a significant influence of soil physical state, soil type, traffic tonnage, and wheel loads on the accumulation of plastic deformation. Comparisons between predicted and experimental results show good applicability of the improved method.