Soil Failure with Narrow Tines

Abstract A force prediction model has been developed for tines of a wide range of working depth/width ratios. The soil worked by the tines is assumed to obey the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion. The predictions show useful agreement with experimental data for the horizontal force components in two soil conditions with high angles of shearing resistance. A method is proposed for estimating the critical depth of a tine, the depth below which the soil failure mechanism changes.