The effect of travel rate on force response of soil cutting blades is considered and found to include inertial, shear strength, and failure mode phenomena. The inertial effect is related to the acceleration of the cut soil mass and a simple equation is extracted from the literature and shown to correlate with the test results of flat inclined blades. The blade cutting force of saturated clay is found to exhibit a pronounced shear strength-rate effect which can be predicted from cone penetrometer measurements. Travel rate is found to change the mode of failure of certain soil-blade systems.
