• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.67-76
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• 2006

The reasonable assessment of the shear stiffness of a dredged soft ground and soft clay is difficult due to the soil disturbance. This study addresses the development and application of a new in-situ shear wave measuring apparatus (field velocity probe: FVP), which overcomes several of the limitations of conventional methods. Design concerns of this new apparatus include the disturbance of soils, cross-talking between transducers, electromagnetic coupling between cables, self acoustic insulation, the constant travel distance of S-wave, the rotation of the transducer, directly transmitted wave through a frame from transducer to transducer, and protection of the transducer and the cable. These concerns are effectively eliminated by continuous improvements through performing field and laboratory tests. The shear wave velocity of the FVP is simply calculated, without any inversion process, by using the travel distance and the first arrival time. The developed FVP Is tested in soil up to 30m in depth. The experimental results show that the FVP can produce every detailed shear wave velocity profiles in sand and clay layers. In addition, the shear wave velocity at the tested site correlates well with the cone tip resistance. This study suggests that the FVP may be an effective technique for measuring the shear wave velocity in the field to assess dynamic soil properties in soft ground.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.11
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• pp.105-115
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• 2009

The Jeju sand was sampled from the beach in Jeju Island and its basic properties were analyzed. The cementation effect of Jeju coastal sediments was evaluated from in-situ tests such as SPT, CPT, and the Suspension-PS test. It was shown from test results that the Jeju sand has high extreme void ratios due to the angularity of grains and the intra-particle voids of hollow particles, similar to typical calcareous sands. From cone penetration test in the calibration chamber, it was found that the cone resistance($q_c$)-relative density($D_R$)-vertical effective stress(${\sigma}_v'$) relation of Jeju sand almost matches that of high compressible quartz sand. However, the $q_C-D_R-{\sigma}_v'$ correlation suggested for uncemented Jeju sand overestimates the relative density of coastal sediments of Jeju Island due to the cementation effect. From the analysis of the relation of cone resistance, N value, and small strain shear modulus measured in-situ, it seems reasonable to assume that the coastal sediment of Jeju Island is a naturally cemented one.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.33-45
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• 2009

The conventional single-core PBDs have been widely used in order to accelerate consolidation settlement of soft grounds. When using the single-core PBD in a thick clay deposit, a delay of consolidation may occur due to high confining pressure in the thick deposit and necking of drains. This study is to compare the performances of soil improvement by the single-core and double-core PBD installed at a site in Busan New Port which exhibits approximately a 40m-thick clay layer. An in-situ test program was performed at the test site where a set of the double-core PBDs and single-core PBDs were installed to compare the efficiency of each drain. In addition, the discharge capacity of each PBD has been measured using the modified Delft Test. A series of laboratory tests for estimating in-situ soil properties have also been performed in order to obtain input parameters for a numerical program ILLICON. The discharge capacity of the double-core PBD is higher than that of the single-core PBD in the modified Delft Test. However it is observed from the comparative in-situ test and numerical analysis that there is no difference in the performance of ground improvement between the two drain systems. This discrepancy comes from the fact that the amount of water released during consolidation in most common field conditions is much smaller than the capacity of even the single core PBD. And thus, considering actual field conditions, it can be concluded that the single-core PBD has enough discharge capacity even in the thick clay deposit such as this test site.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.26 no.12
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• pp.5-17
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• 2010

Coarse granular material is used as important fill material in most of large embankments such as railway, road, dam and so on. Therefore, the accurate design parameters of the coarse granular material are necessarily required in design and construction. The behavior of the coarse granular material was not well understood because of the lack of large testing equipment capable of coarse granular material. A large triaxial testing system was developed in this research, capable of large specimens of 500 mm, 300 mm and 150 mm in diameter. In the new large triaxial testing system, the load cell is installed inside the triaxial cell and axial displacement is measured locally on a specimen in order to improve control and measurement in small strain level. Urethane specimens of 300 mm and 50 mm in diameter were prepared. The large triaxial tests were performed on the 300 mm diameter urethane specimens while RC/TS and impact echo tests on the 50 mm diameter urethane specimens to verify this testing system. In this verification test results, we could ascertain the reasonable test results of the KRRI large triaxial testing system.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.47-60
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• 2007

Conventional active surface wave measurements performed using a transient or continuous source are often limited in the maximum depth of penetration due to the difficulty of generating low-frequency energy with reasonably portable sources. This limitation may inhibit accurate seismic site response calculations because of the inability to define deeper subsurface structure. By measuring surface wave generated by passive sources including microtremors and cultural noise, it is possible to overcome this problem and develop soil stiffness profiles to much larger depth. Reliability of dispersion estimates from the passive surface wave measurements is critical to present reliable shear wave velocity profiles and can be improved by the measurements and analyses of passive surface waves based on correct understanding of systematic errors included in passive dispersion data. In this study, the systematic errors caused by poor wavenumber resolution and energy leakage into sidelobes in passive tests are mainly explored. Recommendations for reliable passive surface wave measurements and dispersion estimates are presented and illustrated at a site in San Jose, California, U.S.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.7
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• pp.87-98
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• 2007

A series of dilatometer test, field vane test, and $CK_0U$ triaxial test were performed for clayey soils of Busan new port site to develop the relationships between undrained shear strength and the DMT results. Normalized undrained shear strength is turned out to be $S_{u(CKU)}/{\sigma}'_v=0.30{\sim}0.35\;for\;CK_0U$ triaxial test and ${\mu}S_{u(VST)}/{\sigma}'_v=0.20{\sim}0.22$ for vane shear test. By comparing the undrained shear strength estimated from DMT indices with the results measured by in-situ vane test or $CK_0U$ triaxial test, two methods to predict the undrained shear strength from DMT results are suggested. One is based on the relationship between $S_u/{\sigma}'_v$ and horizontal stress index (KD) while another method comes from $N_c-I_D$ and $N_c-E_D$ correlation. It was observed that the method based on $N_c-I_D\;or\;N_c-E_D$ relation shows slightly better accuracy than the one based on $K_D$ although all of the methods suggested in this study provided comparable values of predicted undrained shear strength. Since the definitions of $I_D\;and\;E_D$ contain $p_1-p_0$, in which soil condition is reflected, it is believed that the prediction method using $N_c$ is capable of taking a material type into consideration.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.7
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• pp.5-16
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• 2008

Most of roadway tunnels have been constructed in the form of parallel twin tunnel in Korea. If parallel twin tunnel does not have a sufficient separation distance between tunnels, the problem of tunnel stability can occur. Generally, it is reported that tunnels are not influenced by each other when a center distance between tunnels is two times longer than tunnel diameter under the complete elastic ground and five times under the soft ground. In this study, the scaled model tests of closely-spaced parallel twin tunnel using homogeneous material are performed and induced displacements are measured around the tunnel openings during excavation. The influence of separation distance between tunnels on the behavior of closely-spaced tunnel is investigated. The experimental results are expressed by the induced displacement vector and progress of crack during construction and at failure. The results show that based on the analysis of induced displacement at the crown during construction, the additional displacement of the preceding tunnel induced by the excavation of following tunnel decreases as the separation distance between twin tunnel increases until the center to center distance is two times of tunnel diameter. Beyond this point, however, the additional displacement has become stabilized.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.3C
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• pp.115-125
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• 2009

The preconsolidation pressure has been commonly determined by oedometer test. However, it can also be determined by insitu test, such as piezocone test with theoretical and(or) empirical correlations. Recently, Neural Network (NN) theory was applied and some models were proposed to estimate the preconsolidation pressure or OCR. It was already found that NN model can come over the site dependency and prediction accuracy is greatly improved when compared with present theoretical and empirical models. However, since the optimization process of synaptic weights of NN model is dependent on the initial synaptic weights, NN models which are trained with different initial weights can't avoid the variability on prediction result for new database even though they have same structure and use same transfer function. In this study, Committee Neural Network (CNN) model is proposed to improve the initial weight dependency of multi-layered neural network model on the prediction of preconsolidation pressure of soft clay from piezocone test result. Prediction results of CNN model are compared with those of conventional empirical and theoretical models and multi-layered neural network model, which has the optimized structure. It was found that even though the NN model has the optimized structure for given training data set, it still has the initial weight dependency, while the proposed CNN model can improve the initial weight dependency of the NN model and provide a consistent and precise inference result than existing NN models.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.26 no.1C
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• pp.25-31
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• 2006

It is common to use the unconfined compressive strength (UCS) of intact rock to estimate the shaft resistance of rock socketed drilled shaft. Therefore the most design manuals give a guide to use the UCS of rock core to estimate the shaft resistance of rock-socketed drilled shaft. Recently, however the design manuals for highway bridge (KSCE, 2001) and of AASHTO (2000) were revised to use the UCS of rock mass with RQD instead of the UCS of rock core so that the estimated resistance could be representative of field conditions. Questions have been raised in application of the new guide to the domestic main bed rock types. The intrinsic drawbacks in terms of RQD were comprised in the questions, too. As the results, in 2002 the new guide in the design manual for highway bridge (KSCE, 2001) were again revised to use the UCS of rock core to estimate the shaft resistance of rock-socketed drilled shafts. In this paper, various methods which can estimate the UCS of rock mass from intact rock core were reviewed. It seems that among those, the Hoek-Brown method is very reliable and practical for the estimation of the UCS of rock mass from rock cores. As the results, using the Hoek-Brown failure criterion a modified guide for the estimation of the shaft resistance of rock-socketed drilled shafts was suggested in this paper. Through a case study it is shown that the suggested method gives a good agreement with the measured data.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.4A
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• pp.329-335
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• 2009

The purpose of this study is to provide the efficient method and guideline of controlling the cracking in bridge deck concrete due to differential drying shrinkage. Drying shrinkage cracking is mainly influenced by the moisture diffusion coefficient that determines moisture diffusion rate inside concrete structures. In addition to the diffusion coefficient, surface coefficient of concrete surface and relative humidity of ambient air simultaneously affect the moisture evaporation from concrete inside to external air outside. Within the framework of cracking shrinkage cracking mechanism, it is necessary to conceive the numerical analysis, which involves these three influencing factors to predict and control the shrinkage cracking of concrete. In this study, moisture diffusion and stress analysis corresponding to drying shrinkage on bridge deck are performed with consideration of diffusion coefficient, surface coefficient, and relative humidity of ambient air. From the numerical results, it is found that cracking behavior due to differential drying shrinkage of bridge deck concrete shows different feature according to three influencing factors and the methodology of controlling of drying shrinkage cracks can be suggested from this study.