Citation

Riley JG, Furry RB. Highw. Res. Rec. 1973; 438: 54-62.

Copyright

(Copyright © 1973, National Research Council (U.S.A.), Highway Research Board)

DOI

unavailable

PMID

unavailable

Abstract

A mathematical model was formulated to simulate the phenomenon of washboarding on unpaved roads. Both the vehicle and the road components were treated as spring-mass-damper assemblies. A digital computer program was written to solve the equations of motion of the system; displacement forcing functions represented irregularities in the path of a moving wheel. The program was executed with varying road and vehicle characteristics, and thus the relations among those primary characteristics and washboard presence and dimensions were established and then verified by physical model tests in the laboratory. In both the simulation and the physical tests, the primary and secondary variables were expressed as dimensionless ratios.

RESULTS showed that vehicle weight, tire pressure, and vehicle speed affected primarily the wavelength of the corrugations but that there were maximum or minimum values of those parameters above or below which corrugations would not occur.

RESULTS also showed that, for the particular surface materials used, washboarding occurred more readily in a material with a relatively high specific damping capacity and that this property was related to particle shape, effective size, and uniformity coefficient.

Record URL:
http://onlinepubs.trb.org/Onlinepubs/hrr/1973/438/438-006.pdf

Language: en

Keywords

MATHEMATICAL MODELS; ROADS AND STREETS; DATA PROCESSING