AN INTEGRATED APPROACH TO SOIL COMPACTION PREDICTION

Several areas of study are contributing to the development of procedures to predict soil compaction from machinery traffic. Stresses at the soil-tyre interface are being measured. Analytical and finite element analyses are being used to predict stresses throughout the soil profile. Constitutive stress-strain relationships link soil. stresses to compaction and strain. Measured stress states in the soil profile provide intermediate validation of the procedures. This paper summarizes research on measurement of soil-tyre interface stresses, measurement of stress states in the soil profile, the development of soil constitutive relationships and analytical and finite element methods to represent the soil compaction process.