In order to analyze the healing effectiveness of rock salt cracks affected by the applied stresses and time, we used the ultrasonic technology to monitor the ultrasonic pulse velocity (UPV) variations for different initial stress-damaged rock salts during self-healing experiments. The self-healing experiments were to create different conditions to improve the microcracks closure or recrystallized, which the self-healing effect of damaged salt specimens were analyzed during the recovery period about 30 days. We found that: The ultrasonic pulse velocity of the damaged rock salts increases rapidly during the first 9 days recovery, and the values gradually increase to reach constant values after 30 days. The damaged value and the healed value were identified based on the variation of the wave velocity. The damaged values of the specimens that are subject to higher initial damage stress are still keeping in large after 30 days recovery under the same recovery condition It is interesting that the damage and the healing were not in the linear relationship, and there also existed a damage threshold for salt cracks healing ability. When the damage degree is less than the threshold, the self-healing ratio of rock salt is increased with the increase in damage degree. However, while the damage degree exceeds the threshold, the self-healing ratio is decreased with the increase in damage.

In the note a comprehensive and optimal passive-active mode for describing the limit failure of circular shallow tunnel with settlement is put forward to predict the catastrophic stability during the geotechnical construction. Since the surrounding soil mass around tunnel roof is not homogeneous, with tools of variation calculus, several different curve functions which depict several failure shapes in different soil layers are obtained using virtual work formulae. By making reference to the simple-form of Power-law failure criteria based on numerous experiments, a numerical procedure with consideration of combination of upper bound theorem and stochastic medium theory is applied to the optimal analysis of shallow-buried tunnel failure. With help of functional catastrophe theory, this work presented a more accurate and optimal failure profile compared with previous work. Lastly the note discusses different effects of parameters in new yield rule and soil mechanical coefficients on failure mechanisms. The scope of failure block becomes smaller with increase of the parameter A and the range of failure soil mass tends to decrease with decrease of unit weight of the soil and tunnel radius, which verifies the geomechanics and practical case in engineering.

The estimation of the strength and other mechanical parameters characterizing the tensile behavior of granites can play an important role in civil engineering tasks such as design, construction, rehabilitation and repair of existing structures. The purpose of this paper is to apply data mining techniques, such as multiple regression (MR), artificial neural networks (ANN) and support vector machines (SVM) to estimate the mechanical properties of granites. In a first phase, the mechanical parameters defining the complete tensile behavior are estimated based on the tensile strength. In a second phase, the estimation of the mechanical properties is carried out from different combination of the physical properties (ultrasonic pulse velocity, porosity and density). It was observed that the estimation of the mechanical properties can be optimized by combining different physical properties. Besides, it was seen that artificial neural networks and support vector machines performed better than multiple regression model.

The paper aims to analyze the behaviour of torsional type surface waves propagating through fluid saturated inhomogeneous porous media clamped between two inhomogeneous anisotropic media. We considered three types of inhomogeneities in upper anisotropic layer which varies exponentially, quadratically and hyperbolically with depth. The anisotropic half space inhomogeneity varies linearly with depth and intermediate layer is taken as inhomogeneous fluid saturated porous media with sinusoidal variation. Following Biot, the dispersion equation has been derived in a closed form which contains Whittaker's function and its derivative, for approximate result that have been expanded asymptotically up to second term. Possible particular cases have been established which are in perfect agreement with standard results and observe that when one of the upper layer vanishes and other layer is homogeneous isotropic over a homogeneous half space, the velocity of torsional type surface waves coincides with that of classical Love type wave. Comparative study has been made to identify the effects of various dimensionless parameters viz. inhomogeneity parameters, anisotropy parameters, porosity parameter, and initial stress parameters on the torsional wave propagation by means of graphs using MATLAB. The study has its own relevance in connection with the propagation of seismic waves in the earth where fluid saturated poroelastic layer is present.

A series of direct shear tests were implemented on three different types of specimens (i.e., clean Perth sand, sand containing 10, 20 and 30% bentonite, sand containing 1, 3 and 5% slag, and sand containing 10, 20 and 30% bentonite with increasing percentages of added slag (1%, 3% and 5%). This paper focuses on the shear stress characteristics of clean sand and sand mixtures. The samples were tested under different three normal stresses (100, 150 and 200 kPa) and three curing periods of no curing time, 7 and 14 days. It was observed that the shear stresses of clean sand and mixtures were increased with increasing normal stresses. In addition, the use of slag has improved the shear strength of the sand-slag mixtures; the shear stresses rose from 128.642 kPa in the clean sand at normal stress of 200 kPa to 146.89 kPa, 154 kPa and 161.14 kPa when sand was mixed with 1%, 3% and 5% slag respectively and tested at the same normal stress. Internal friction angle increased from $32.74^{\circ}$ in the clean sand to $34.87^{\circ}$, $37.12^{\circ}$ and $39.4^{\circ}$ when sand was mixed with 1%, 3% and 5% slag respectively and tested at 100, 150, and 200 kPa normal stresses. The cohesion of sand-bentonite mixtures increased from 3.34 kPa in 10% bentonite to 22.9 kPa, 70.6 kPa when sand was mixed with 20% and 30% bentonite respectively. All the mixtures of clean sand, different bentonite and slag contents showed different behaviour; some mixtures exhibited shear stress more than clean sand whereas others showed less than clean sand. The internal friction angle increased, and cohesion decreased with increasing curing time.

The "pseudo-wedge" failure is a name for a complex instability occurring at the Sarcheshmeh open-pit mine (Iran). The pseudo-wedge failure contains both the rock bridge failure and sliding along pre-existing discontinuities. In this paper, a cross section of the failure area was first modeled using a bonded-particle method. The results indicated development of tensile cracks at the slope toe which explains the freedom of pseudo-wedge blocks to slide. Then, a three-dimensional discrete element method was used to perform a block analysis of the instability. The technique of shear strength reduction was used to calculate the factor of safety. Finally, the influence of geometrical characteristics of the mine wall on the pseudo-wedge failure was investigated. The safety factor significantly increases as the dip and dip direction of the wall decrease, and reaches an acceptable value with a 10-degree decrease of them.

Aimed at serious casing damage problem during the process of oilfield development by injecting water, based on seepage mechanics, fluid mechanics and the theory of rock mechanics, the multi-physics coupling theory was also taken into account, the mathematical model for production of petroleum with water flooding was established, and the method to solve the coupling model was presented by combination of Abaqus and Eclipse software. The Q9G3 block in Jibei oilfield was taken for instance, the well log data and geological survey data were employed to build the numerical model of Q9G3 block, the method established above was applied to simulate the evolution of seepage and stress. The production data was imported into the model to conduct the history match work of the model, and the fitting accuracy of the model was quite good. The main mechanism of casing damage of the block was analyzed, and some wells with probable casing damage problem were pointed out, the displacement of the well wall matched very well with testing data of the filed. Finally, according to the simulation results, some useful measures for preventing casing damage in Jibei oilfield was proposed.

To investigate the crushing behaviour of coarse granular materials, a specifically designed, large-scale simple shear apparatus with eight-staged shearing rings was developed. A series of monotonic simple shear tests were conducted on two kinds of coarse granular materials under different vertical stresses and large shear strains. The evolution of the particle breakage during the compression and simple shearing processes was investigated. The results show that the amount of particle breakage is related to the particle hardness and the state of the stresses. The amount of particle breakage is greater for softer granular materials and increases with increasing vertical stresses. Particle breakage may tend towards a critical value during both the compression and the shearing processes. Particle breakage mainly occurs during the processes of confined compression and contraction.

Formation of a soil plug in an open-ended pile is a very important factor in determining the pile behavior both during driving and during static loading. The degree of soil plugging can be represented by the incremental filling ratio (IFR) which is defined as the change in the plug length to the change of the pile embedment length. The experimental tests carried out in this research contain 138 tests that are divided as follows: 36 tests for single pile, 36 tests for pile group ($2{\times}1$), 36 tests for pile group ($2{\times}2$) and 30 pile group ($2{\times}3$). All tubular piles were tested using the poorly graded sand from the city of Karbala in Iraq. The sand was prepared at three different densities using a raining technique. Different parameters are considered such as method of installation, relative density, removal of soil plug with respect to length of plug and pile length to diameter ratio. The soil plug is removed using a new device which is manufactured to remove the soil column inside open pipe piles group installed using driving and pressing device. The principle of soil plug removal depends on suction of sand inside the pile. It was concluded that the incremental filling ratio (IFR) is changed with the changing of soil state and method of installation. For driven pipe pile group, the average IFR for piles in loose is 18% and 19.5% for L/D=12 and 15, respectively, while the average of IFR for driven piles in dense sand is 30% and 20% for L/D=12 and L/D=15 respectively. For pressed method of pile installation, the average IFR for group is zero for loose and medium sand and about 5% for dense sand. The group capacity increases with the increase of IFR. For driven pile with length of 450 mm, the average IFR % is about 30.3% in dense sand, 14% in medium and 18.3% for loose sand while when the length of pile is 300 mm, the percentage equals to 20%, 17% and 19.5%, respectively.

The present work presents a free vibration and buckling analysis of orthotropic plates by proposing a novel two variable refined plate theory. Contrary to the conventional higher order shear deformation theories (HSDT) and the first shear deformation theory (FSDT), the proposed theory utilizes a novel displacement field which incorporates undetermined integral terms and involves only two unknowns. The governing equations are obtained from the dynamic version of principle of virtual works. The analytical solution of a simply supported orthotropic plate has been determined by using the Navier method. Numerical investigations are performed by employing the proposed model and the obtained results are compared with the existing HSDTs.