Intermittent geofoam in-filled trench for vibration screening considering soil non-linearity

The application of open as well as in-filled trenches as vibration screening technique has been considered in several situations. However, very few works have included the Expanded Polystyrene (EPS) geofoam as an in-filled material for the trench. The current study focuses on the effectiveness of the intermittent geofoam in-filled trench as vibration barrier in presence of machine induced ground vibration, where the geofoam blocks and the open air pockets are arranged alternately to form an effective vibration screening material. The screening efficiency of the geofoam in-filled trench is determined in terms of Amplitude Reduction Factor (ARF). The effect of the soil non-linearity under the propagating waves is also emphasized in the present study. Hyperbolic non-linear elastic Duncan and Chang (1970) soil model has been implemented in time domain finite element analysis. A parametric study is performed considering the geometric parameters of trench, excitation frequency, and stiffness of the soil.