Application of BIM Technology in High-speed Railway Subgrade

Engineering

Zhan ming Liu

, Chun mei Guo

, Hao tian Mi

and Ling kun Chen

School of Civil Engineering, Southwest Jiaotong University, Chengdu, 610031 Sichuan, PR China

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

ENOVIA

Civil

Lumion ProjectWise

Bridg

AssetWise

Invent

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

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 m³ 1125

2 Composite baffle m³ 345

3 Strip foundation m³ 20

4 The road subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (650kg/m³) m³ 3881.75

5 The bottom of subgrade Ordinary lightweight concrete (600kg/m³) m³ 19093.75

6 The top of subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (700kg/m³) m³ 3747

7 The top of subgrade High performance lightweight concrete (700kg/m³) m³ 1819.84

8 Concrete surface m³ 2732.66

9 Bed plate m³ 930

10 Track slab m³ 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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