Evaluation of the status of subgrade of high speed railway using HWAW method

HWAW방법을 이용한 고속철도 하부 노반 평가

The high-speed railway consists of tracks, gravel ballast and subgrade, and the dynamic load is passed to subgrade through track and gravel ballast. The relaxation condition of the gravel ballast is able to be evaluate relatively and to be repaired through a continuous management, but it is difficult to evaluate the condition of subgrade, which is final part of supporting dynamic load and to repair it when made a problem. The gravel ballast and subgrade are evaluated by determining shear wave velocity. To evaluate ballast and subgrade, a good method to determine shear wave velocity is a non-destructive experiment such as surface wave tests providing a prompt experiment because an experiment in railway has a lot of tests which are carried out following railway directions and needs to prevent damage of the system. In general, a railway has limitation of an experimental space by narrow width, sleeper and etc., and background noise by a reflector exists. The existing surface wave tests need a minimum space, and it is difficult to get a reliable test results on account of background noise effect. Therefore, it is difficult or impossible to apply to existing surface wave test of subgrade and ballast. In this study, the HWAW method is applied to determine a shear wave velocity profile of the underground. The HWAW method is the experiment which is able to be carried out on a narrow space, and it determines share wave velocity of a site by measuring the wave from surface sources on the same spot. In addition, it removes effects of background noise accordingly to a signal processing using harmonic wavelet transforms, so it is useful to evaluate subgrade of a high-speed railway in the narrow space and the situation of background noise. In order to check an application of the HWAW method, an experiment is carried out on a high-speed railway field and a test result is compared to boring results.