MODELING OF OPERATIONAL BEHAVIOUR OF A RAILWAY EMBANKMENT

Geosynthetic materials for railways embankments are used for: consolidation of low capacity soils, improvement of slope stability and as alternatives to replace a percentage of the thickness of granular materials. The main goal is to support environmental protection by reducing the exploitation of natural resources. Most approaches are based on comparison of physical models with numerical modeling using finite element softwares with as few simplifying assumptions introduced in the input data. Actual measurements during operation of such works that incorporate geosynthetic materials can confirm assumptions taken into account in the modeling of various researchers. Thus, the paper presents measurement results on the field for the railway sector in Bucharest-Constanta railway in four consecutive years. After 7 years of operation, geosynthetic materials has been analyzed in terms of mechanical tensile strength at in independent laboratory in Germany. Stress-strain curve obtained was subsequently used in FEM analysis to obtain the state of stress and deformation of the embankment. In the analysis were taken into account the following assumptions: 1. Embankment unreinforced and 2 embankment reinforced with geosynthetic. Results are presented as stress and strain diagrams which highlight the favorable behavior of reinforced embankment operation.