Mandi: Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology Mandi, and Durham University in the United Kingdom, have developed suction monitoring setup for soil cyclic triaxial testing to investigate the impact of climate change on railway embankments.

The findings of this study were published in the ASCE Journal of Geotechnical and Geoenvironmental Engineering, USA, published by the American Society of Civil Engineers. The study was conducted by Dr. Ashutosh Kumar, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, IIT Mandi, and co-authored by Dr. Arash Azizi, Assistant Professor, University of Portsmouth, UK and Prof. David Geoffrey Toll, Department of Engineering, Durham University, UK.

The main component of railway infrastructure is the trackbed, which is supported by earthworks. This is mainly used to support the track infrastructure and carry the load imparted by the moving traffic. The present design protocols only consider the load developed due to the moving train thereby ignoring the real case scenario of changing the natural state of the soil due to ingress and egress of water. Oftentimes, soil used in earthworks is compacted and remains unsaturated during its lifetime. Seasonal variations in terms of precipitation and drought are capable of altering the amount of water present within this compacted soil mass which can alter the strength of the embankment.

Understanding the coupled impact of train and environmental loading is essential to design and maintain the railway embankment against changing climatic conditions.

Therefore, this study developed a setup within a cyclic triaxial apparatus to monitor changes in soil suction and deformation brought   by traffic-induced cyclic loading and environmental loading, which can be used to assess climate risk at the design stage of railway embankments.” The soil sample used in the study was taken from a 650-km heavy haul South African coal line that connects around 40 mines to the Richards Bay Coal Terminal in South Africa.

Highlighting his work, Dr. Ashutosh Kumar, Assistant Professor, School of Engineering, IIT Mandi, said, “The research is unique in its kind as it would now allow understanding of the coupled impact of cyclic traffic-induced loading and environmental loading on the long-term performance of unsaturated soil present within the railway embankments.

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