Abstract

Development of infrastructures may cause trees to be felled. One of the solutions to avoid
tree felling is to plant the tree in a moveable container. The small and confined area of the
container can restrict the root growth which could lead to stability problems. The
objective of this study is to understand the failure mechanism and parameters affecting
the stability of a tree planted inside a container filled with top soil in withstanding
prevailing wind speeds in Singapore.

The failure mechanism and the parameters affecting the containerized tree were
investigated by performing an overall stability analysis of the container, internal stability
analysis of the tree, numerical modeling of the tree and small scale stability tests in
laboratory for verification purposes. An overall stability analysis of container was
performed to evaluate the stability of the container against sliding and overturning.
Parametric studies were performed to observe the effect of different container sizes to the
stability of the container. Internal stability analysis and numerical modeling were
performed to evaluate the stability of the tree with and without the container. The root
architecture used in this study was limited to plate root. Parametric studies were
conducted to observe the effect of soil properties, root size, and tree parameters to the
tree stability for a fixed container size. A small-scale stability test was performed to
verify the results of the stability analyses. The small scale test includes the determination
of the properties of the top soil and the overturning test.

There are two failure modes of a containerized tree. The first one is the container
overturning and the second one is the tree overturning. The development of failure mode
depends on the root architecture and the container size. The small scale stability test
showed that the container overturning is the governing failure mode if:
a. The root plate depth is more than 0.8 times of the container height and the root
plate diameter is more than 0.33 times the container diameter or
b. The root plate depth is more than 0.6 times the container height and the root plate
diameter is more than 0.83 times the container diameter.
If the root plate depth or the root plate diameter is less than root plate depth and diameter
from two criteria above, the governing failure mode is tree overturning.

For the tree overturning, the maximum wind force increases with the increase in the root
plate diameter and root plate depth. The increase in the maximum wind force due to the
increase in root plate diameter is higher than the increase in the maximum wind force due
to the increase in root depth. Hence, an increase in root plate diameter is more effective to
increase tree stability. An increase in matric suction or an increase in angle of internal
friction will increase the maximum wind force needed to overturn the tree while an
increase in tree height decreases the maximum wind force needed to overturn the tree.