Soil arching is a common phenomenon in pile supported embankments resting on soft soil. Due to soil arching, stress acting on soft soil or geosynthetic reinforcement decreases and stress on piles increases. This can reduce the settlement difference along the subgrade cross-section. Now most of the high-speed railway subgrade in soft soil area in China has been designed considering the effect of soil arching. However, during the service life of the railway line, the subgrade will carry on high-cycle dynamic loads and when the subgrade is not high enough, the soil arching might be influenced and the permanent deformation will increase. In this paper the properties of soil arching under dynamic loads have been investigated by performing model experiments. It was found that the failure of soil arching occurred at arching foot firstly and then spread upward. Both the thickness of the covering soil and the density of soil have influences on the soil arching under dynamic load. With the increase in sand height and density, the required time of failure of soil arching also increases.
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