Analysis of the Blasting Compaction on Gravel Soil

Abstract

The settlement control is critical for the safety of road based on high filled embankment. The traditional construction methods have the characteristic with less soil thickness compacted at a time. There are many advantages to compact the gravel soil with blasting. The cavity in soil is formed by blasting and its fillings to form a composite foundation for the embankment. The field data show this composite foundation can meet the requirement of loading and settlement control with less construction time. In geotechnical blasting, the high temperature due to blasting will swell the material around, so its worthy to do the coupled analysis with thermal mechanics (TM) and blasting compaction in the high filled embankment. In this paper, a 3D model is built with FLAC3D to simulate a single hole to predict the range and degree of thermal propagation. Then, the thermal strains got from the model are used to estimate the displacement of surrounding soil to predict the degree of compaction and optimize the distribution of blast holes in plan.