Application of BIM Technology in High-speed Railway Subgrade
Engineering
Zhan ming Liu
1
, Chun mei Guo
1
, Hao tian Mi
1
and Ling kun Chen
2
1
School of Civil Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031 Sichuan, PR China
2
College of Civil Science and Engineering, Yangzhou University, Yangzhou, 225127 Jiangsu, PR China
Keywords: BIM technology, high-speed railway subgrade, Informatization.
Abstract: BIM technology is the main technical means to implement the informatization of railway engineering
construction. The application and promotion of BIM technology are the primary choice for the
implementation of digital railway construction. So far, BIM technology has been widely used in housing
construction and other related fields, but it is still at an exploratory stage in the field of high-speed railways.
Aiming at the demands for the engineering construction of the high-speed railway subgrade, the paper
explores the BIM-based operational flow of high-speed railway subgrade, analyzes the application process
of BIM technology, and provides a reference for the application of BIM technology in high-speed railway
subgrade engineering. It is necessary to further study the application of high-speed railway BIM technology
and increase the secondary development based on BIM technology in the future.
1 INTRODUCTION
Informatization plays an increasingly crucial role in
the modernization of China's railway construction.
There is a huge demand for the development. To
vigorously develop informatization is an important
way to modernize China's railway construction.
Among them, BIM technology is an advanced
information processing tool and is the center of life
cycle management of railway engineering [1]. BIM
technology is the main technical means for the
implementation of informatization of railway
engineering construction. Its necessity and value
have been recognized by and attracted attention from
the industry. The application and promotion of BIM
technology is the primary choice for the
implementation of digital railway construction. So
far, BIM technology has been widely used in
housing construction and other related fields, but it
is still at an exploratory stage in the field of high-
speed railways.
2 APPLICATION STATUS AND
MAIN PROBLEMS OF BIM IN
HIGH-SPEED RAILWAY
ENGINEERING
2.1 Application Status
The application and research of railway BIM is
based on the technical requirements. There are no
railway standards in the world. This poses great
restrictions and obstacles to the promotion and
application of BIM in the construction of railway
projects. China Railway Corporation began to
implement the task of studying the BIM standard
system in 2013. So far, China has promulgated the
BIM technical standard for railways as
Classification and Coding Standards for Railway
Engineering Information Models (version 1. 0), etc.
[2].
The application of BIM technology in high-speed
railway projects of China is still in the exploring
stage. It is presented in the research of single-point,
single-professional application of BIM technology.
At this link, the research and application of BIM
technology have been carried out in lines, subgrades,
bridges, tunnels, geological models, and station
buildings of some projects, such as the three-
dimensional design of a high-speed railway in
Western China undertaken by China Railway
Eryuan Engineering Group Co., Ltd., the high-speed
railway project in the west of Yinchuan, etc., and
have achieved excellent results [3]. They cover
many types of specialized model component
libraries, implement the effective integration of GIS,
BIM, and terrain geological model data, and realize
the use of informatized construction techniques such
as real-time data processing and real-time
interaction.
In addition, the application of BIM technology in
high-speed rail requires the support of relevant
professional software. If there is a need to present
BIM value at a very large level, multi-level software
is necessary. The paper divides the mainstream BIM
software into design modeling, model analysis
application and engineering management in
accordance with the construction phase of high-
speed railway construction, as shown in Table 1.
Table 1 BIM Software Related to Railway Engineering
Construction.
Design
modeling
Model analysis
application
Engineering
management
Revit Navisworks ProjectWise
Archi
CAD
Infraworks36
0
ENOVIA
Civil
3D
Lumion ProjectWise
Bridg
e
AssetWise
Invent
or
Glodon BIM
software
2.2 Main Problems
(1) Standard issues
Research on BIM standards worldwide does not
cover railroads completely and such researches are
still under progress. The current BIM standards are
generally applicable to the housing construction
industry, and their fields mainly cover: Building
structure, electrical, HVAC, construction
management, etc., but they cannot cover the unique
professional fields in the railway field, such as:
Orbit, geographical information, bridge, subgrade,
station building, geological environment, tunnel,
route and locomotive, etc. The above-mentioned
unique professional fields need to be redefined in the
preparation of standards. Although the railway BIM
standard system of China can be used for reference
and research on foreign standards, the task of
expanding is very tedious and difficult. Basic
standards such as IFC and IFD are all professional
contents, which cannot be undertaken by a common
researcher. Only the high-level technicians can solve
these problems. Moreover, the railway project is a
very special linear project. It mainly presents itself
as an effective integration with the terrain and
involves a very large geographic area. This requires
the integration of the GIS field into the railway BIM
standard. However, the effective integration of BIM
and GIS has technically increased the difficulty of
the work.
(2) Software problems
The current software on the market lacks mature
BIM software products in the railway field.
Although there are many products based on BIM
technology in the world, none of these products can
fully meet the regulatory requirements of the
Chinese railway industry. In addition, the software
architecture does not have linear engineering design
elements, and it is difficult for data capacity to
support linear engineering applications. Most
software products are limited to the point
applications, so it is difficult to implement an
effective linear design. The railway field has many
specialties, and the railway engineering process is
particularly tedious and complex. On this basis, the
difficulty of applying BIM technology in railway
engineering is much greater than that in the
construction engineering, especially when the
topographic and geological conditions need to be
integrated. However, BIM software seldom
considers the terrain and geology problems. In order
to meet the needs of railway design, we must also
devote more energy to the secondary development of
the railway system.
(3) Application problem
Domestic and foreign BIM software does not
support railway products. Railway products, semi-
finished products, and components lack
corresponding component libraries. If the existing
BIM component library in the construction field is
used in the market, it will suffer many limitations in
terms of calculation of quantities, information
exchange and other levels. Therefore, it is very
difficult to construct a standardized BIM component
library for the railway industry [4]. In addition, the
internal standards of related software suites are not
uniform. Due to the large number of software
manufacturers, different units do not have the same
usage status, making it difficult to exchange data.
3 APPLICATION OF BIM
TECHNOLOGYIN HIGH-
SPEED RAILWAY SUBGRADE
ENGINEERING
3.1 BIM Implementation Process
Considering the management system and
investigation of China's railway projects, the author
proposes the BIM-based implementation process of
subgrade that is led the construction unit and
participated by the design, construction, and
supervision units. The process of subgrade BIM
application model is shown in Figure 1. The
application of BIM technology starts from the design
phase. The design unit is responsible for the overall
application planning of BIM. The construction unit
undertakes the responsibility of BIM application and
coordinates BIM application management. Finally,
multiple parties should be unified in the BIM-based
management platform. The construction unit can use
the BIM-based management platform to conduct the
comprehensive management such as visualized
construction progress, cost materials, construction
quality and safety, etc. to guide and assist the
construction and improve the engineering efficiency.
After the project is completed, the project and the
completed BIM model will be delivered to the
construction unit.
Figure 1 Implementation process of subgrade BIM.
3.2 The Establishment of A Aew
Lightweight Subgrade Model
The overall idea of the modeling process of this
project is from the local to the whole and from the
bottom to the top. In the entire process of model
building, the built-in model in the placement
component is used to complete all the details and
thus constitutes the entire model. For different parts
of materials, especially when the built-in materials
of Revit do not meet the requirements, the material
parameters are readjusted by data consulting, etc.,
and the material properties of each kind of plate,
high performance concrete, etc. should be consistent
with the actual situation as far as possible.
With regard to the establishment of the model,
the sand mat at the bottom is first completed,
followed by the establishment of a strip foundation,
and then a concrete baffle is built above the
foundation in the manner of building a slant wall.
The baffle is filled with three layers of high-
performance concrete as the main body of the
subgrade, namely subgrade body, subgrade bed
bottom and subgrade bed surface. In the
establishment of these irregular cross-section
members, the built-in model commands such as
stretching, blending and lofting are used for many
times to complete the model establishment. The
establishment of the upper L-shaped baffle is
equivalent to constructing a sand mat at the bottom.
The placement of the final track and the grid
references to the establishment of irregular cross-
section members, thus completing the establishment
of the entire lightweight subgrade model. High-
speed railway lightweight subgrade model and
renderings are shown in Figure 2 and Figure 3.
Figure 2 High-speed railway lightweight subgrade model.
Civil3D software can be used to take samples
and generate multiple cross-sections covering the
topographic surface on the terrain curved surface
imported from the outside. The stratum is then filled
in batch according to the cross-sections using the
horizontal and vertical relationships. Finally,
Civil3D is used to create the physical functions
through different curved surfaces to complete the
creation of BIM geological model.
Figure 3 The renderings of high-speed railway lightweight
subgrade model.
On this basis, the Civil3D component editor is
used to construct the subgrade components
according to the visual programming, and then a
variety of parameterized subgrade structures are
assembled by superimposing according to the
different types of subgrade profiles. Finally, the
assembled system was used to adaptively generate
subgrade models along the terrain curved surface
using the three-dimensional lines.
Through the assembly of creation, Civil3D can
effectively process the subgrade designs, but the
relevant families still need to be created by Revit for
the special types of subgrades such as baffles,
concrete mixing pile and other structures. Revit uses
the model of building a family to establish a
subgrade model, but lacks the ability to interact with
the terrain, resulting in more difficulties in designing
the slope of the roadbed, and creating many families
associated with the longitudinal profiles.
3.3 Construction Simulation
Relevant Revit models are imported into
Navisworks, and animations are used to express the
inflexible construction process vividly and clearly.
Compared with the traditional steps, the final intent
of the design can be presented more accurately and
quickly. The time task items of construction steps
that effectively correspond to a model part is
constructed to generate a 4D dynamic model in a
virtual simulation environment, and a demonstration
of the 9-step basic construction process of the high-
speed railway lightweight subgrade is completed.
The simulation of the construction process is shown
in Figure 4.
Figure 4 Construction stimulation.
3.4 Calculation of Project Quantity
Relevant Revit models are imported into
Navisworks, and the three-dimensional engineering
quantity statistics are realized by using the parameter
calculation function and the quantity calculation
module. The calculation results are shown in Figure
5.
Figure 5 Calculation of engineering quantity.
The engineering quantity statistics are shown in.
Table 2. In the actual operation, the Navisworks
parameter calculation function puts more emphasis
on the field of the simple housing construction, and
it is not suitable for the subgrade model. The
calculation efficiency is not high, and secondary
development of the parameter calculation function is
required to meet the demand.
Table 2 Main engineering quantity table of lightweight soil subgrade (per kilometer).
Item Unit Quantity
1 L-shaped baffle 1125
2 Composite baffle 345
3 Strip foundation 20
4 The road subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (650kg/m³) 3881.75
5 The bottom of subgrade Ordinary lightweight concrete (600kg/m³) 19093.75
6 The top of subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (700kg/m³) 3747
7 The top of subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (700kg/m³) 1819.84
8 Concrete surface 2732.66
9 Bed plate 930
10 Track slab 525
3.5 Scene Roaming Animation
The project selects Lumion to create roaming
animations. This software is very easy to operate and
has a good picture rendering effect, which can
demonstrate the true environment. Lumion can
accept the direct import of mainstream 3D models,
such as SU, 3DMAX, DAE and so on. The Revit file
can't be imported directly, but it can be imported in
Lumion by converting the Revit format to DAE
through a plug-in similar as Revit to Lumion Bridge
1.6.1 for Lumion 6. The effect of roaming animation
is shown in figure 6.
Figure 6 Roaming animation effect figure.
3.6 Model Integration and Collaborative
Design
Considering that many software and standard
interfaces are involved in the design of high speed
railway subgrade, it can realize integration and
application by using Navisworks and other software.
There may be many problems in the integration
process, such as the model is too large to be
imported, the unified coordinates are not available,
the file format is not supported, and so on. In order
to solve the above problems, different solutions can
be used, such as unifying the coordinates in design,
adopting lightweight models, using a format
conversion plug-in, conducting relevant secondary
development and so on .[5]When it comes the
subgrade related professionals such as selection,
geology, terrain and so on, the interface level will be
more complex. Therefore, in the design of high-
speed railway subgrade, it is necessary to emphasize
the effective collaborative management among
different specialties. In this case, some collaborative
engineering software, such as ProjectWise, is
needed, which has good cooperative management
effect, and can manage the data flow and work flow
in railway BIM collaborative design.
4 CONCLUSIONS
Based on BIM technology, this paper explores the
BIM operation procedure of high-speed railway
subgrade by establishing subgrade model, simulating
construction, 3D roaming, and quantity statistics,
and analyzes the application process of BIM
technology, as well as provides a reference for the
application of BIM technology in the subgrade
engineering of high speed railway. The related
concepts of BIM technology will affect the
traditional management process and design pattern.
The current audit process and design pattern need to
be adjusted according to the characteristics of BIM.
It is necessary to further study the application of
high-speed railway BIM technology and increase the
secondary development based on BIM technology in
the future.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to acknowledge the financial
support ofthe National College Students' Scientific
Research Training Program Project (Grant No.
201710613082), the Natural Science Foundation of
Jiangsu Province, PR China (Grant No.
BK20161337) and the China Postdoctoral Science
Foundation (Grant No. 2015M581702 and
2016M592695).
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