The superiority of the EPS composite soil in solving the problems of soft soil foundation has drawn the researchers′more and more attention.In this paper

a series of experiments and numerical simulations were carried out by an advanced hollow cylinder apparatus and the ABAQUS finite element software to study the dynamic characteristics of EPS composite soil under the traffic loading.The results indicated that the five variables including the volume ratio of EPS beads to the soil Ve/Vs

initial average effective consolidation pressure p0

initial consolidation stress ratio R0

initial intermediate principal stress coefficient b0

and initial principal stress direction angleα0had great effects on the maxi

mum dynamic shear modulus and the the reference shear strain

while the curves of G/G0

γ

/γrwere hardly affected by these factors.On the other hand

the finite element analysis results showed that the stress increased when EPS composite soil was considered as viscous elastic material instead of elastic material;what’s more

the shear stress attenuated more rapidly with the depth.This paper is expected to shed some light on the further studies on EPS composite soil in soft soil area.