Ripples and grains segregation on unpaved road.

Abstract

Ripples or corrugations are common phenomena observed in unpaved roads in less developed countries or regions. They cause several damages in vehicles leading to increased maintenance and product costs. In this paper, we present a computational study about the so-called washboard roads. Also, we study grain segregation on unpaved roads. Our simulations have been performed by the Discrete Element Method (DEM). In our model, the grains are regarded as soft disks. The grains are subjected to a gravitational ¯eld and both translational and rotational movements are allowed. The results show that wheels' of di®erent sizes, weights and moving with di®erent velocities can change corrugations amplitude and wavelength. Our results also show that some wavelength values are related to speci¯c wheels' speed intervals. Segregation has been studied in roads formed by three distinct grain diameters distribution. We observed that the phenomenon is more evident for higher grain size dispersion