• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.1 no.1
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• pp.59-78
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• 2012

The available analytical methods of analysis for laterally loaded piles in level ground cannot be directly applied to such piles in sloping ground. With the commercially available software, the simulation of the appropriate field condition is a challenging task, and the results are subjective. Therefore, it becomes essential to understand the process of development of a user-framed numerical formulation, which may be used easily as per the specific site conditions without depending on other indirect methods of analysis as well as on the software. In the present study, a detailed three-dimensional finite element formulation is presented for the analysis of laterally loaded piles in sloping ground developing the 18 node triangular prism elements. An application of the numerical formulation has been illustrated for the pile located at the crest of the slope and for the pile located at some edge distance from the crest. The specific examples show that at any given depth, the displacement and bending moment increase with an increase in slope of the ground, whereas they decrease with increasing edge distance.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.21-28
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• 2017

PURPOSES : This paper presents a finite element model to accurately represent the soil-post interaction of single guardrail posts in sloping ground. In this study, the maximum lateral resistance of a guardrail post has been investigated under static and dynamic loadings, with respect given to several parameters including post shape, embedment depth, ground inclination, and embedment location of the steel post. METHODS : Because current analytical methods applied to horizontal ground, including Winkler's elastic spring model and the p-y curve method, cannot be directly applied to sloping ground, it is necessary to seek an alternative 3-D finite element model. For this purpose, a 3D FHWA soil model for road-base soils, as constructed using LS-DYNA, has been adopted to estimate the dynamic behavior of single guardrail posts using the pendulum drop test. RESULTS : For a laterally loaded guardrail post near slopes under static and dynamic loadings, the maximum lateral resistance of a guardrail post has been found to be reduced by approximately 12% and 13% relative to the static analysis and pendulum testing, respectively, due to the effects of ground inclination. CONCLUSIONS : It is expected that the proposed soil material model can be applied to guardrail systems installed near slopes.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.599-610
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• 2021

Conduits are commonly installed below the ground for utility conveyance around the world. Vertical load on a buried conduit is an important parameter that needs to be known to ensure its safe design and installation. Consideration of soil arching in load calculations helps achieve a more realistic and efficient design. In the past, considering the arching effect, the design charts have been presented for use by practicing engineers to calculate the vertical load on the conduit buried below the level ground. There are currently no design charts for calculating the vertical load on the conduit buried under a sloping ground. In this paper, an attempt has been made to present the derivation of a generalized analytical expression considering that the soil mass overlying the conduit has a sloping face and the arching phenomenon takes place. The developed generalized expression has been used to present some design charts considering specific values of slope geometry, soil properties and burial depths. Furthermore, analytical results for specific soil parameters have been compared with the results extracted from a commercial software PLAXIS 2D, for a developed numerical model and an independent study.

• Explosives and Blasting
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.7-19
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• 2002

The cut is placed high up in the section, the 1st sloping holes below the cut, and divided all the holes located below the 1st sloping holes into a certain area with longitudinal section, to lower pollution made from tunnel blasting. With the sequential blasting machine, after I first blasted holes around the cut holes by a pre-splitting method, blasted the cut area and the 1st sloping holes. The 1st and 2nd sloping holes divided areas are initiated gradually to free face upwards made by the cut. Especially, I pre-splinted contour holes previous blast the before sloping holes from the contours. The ground vibration from the earth surface just over the advance face decreased about 42.0% compare with the down blasting method under the condition of equal charge weight per delay. I controlled the crack and over break of the mother rock by pre-splitting contour holes before blast the first sloping holes from the contours. The peak values of noise and air blast by blasting decreased about 10dB more than the down blasting method. the noise and air blast diminished gradually as a round. The throw distance of the fly rock was decreased about 55%.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.24 no.10
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• pp.41-49
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• 2023

Structures such as bridge columns installed on the asymmetric ground such as mountain areas and sloping ground are subject to various loads such as wind, temperature, earthquake, and etc. The pile foundation is generally applied to bridge columns on the asymmetric ground in order to stably support structures. The behavior of the pile foundation supporting bridge columns changes due to various load conditions. In particular, ground-pile-structure interactions should be studied to analyze the behavior of the pile foundation that supports bridge columns effected by dynamic loads such as earthquakes. The pile foundation installed on the asymmetric ground effected by the earthquake has the complicated dynamic interaction between the foundation and the ground due to the ground slope, the difference in soil resistance according to the shaking direction, and the ground movements. In this study, the 1g shaking table tests were conducted to confirm the effect of the slope of the sloping ground on the dynamic behavior of group piles supporting the superstructure installed at the berm of the sloping sandy soil which is the asymmetric ground. The result shows that the acceleration of the pile cap and the superstructure decrease as the slope of the sloping ground increase, and the slope of the dynamic p-y curve of the pile decrease.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.305-312
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• 2018

Significant research efforts were undertaken to evaluate seismic performance of vertically irregular buildings on flat ground. However, there is scarcity of study on seismic performance of buildings on hill slopes. The present study attempts to investigate seismic behaviour of reinforced concrete irregular stepback building frames with different configurations on sloping ground. Based on extensive regression study of free vibration results of four hundred seventeen frames with varying ground slope, number of story and span number, a modification is proposed to the code based empirical fundamental time period estimation formula. The modification to the fundamental time period estimation formula is a simplified function of ground slope and a newly introduced equivalent height parameter to reflect the effect of stiffness and mass irregularity. The derived empirical formula is successfully validated with various combinations of slope and framing configurations of buildings. The correlation between the predicted and the actual time period obtained from the free vibration analysis results are in good agreement. The various statistical parameters e.g., the root mean square error, coefficient of determination, standard average error generally used for validation of such regression equations also ensure the prediction capability of the proposed empirical relation with reasonable accuracy.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2010.06a
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• pp.872-879
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• 2010

High rock-fill embankment is relatively flexible, which makes crest of embankment subject to excessive amplification in displacement due to earthquake loading. To overcome problems related with site response in high embankment, it is essential to evaluate shear-wave velocity profile of the embankment with improved accuracy and reliability. In this aspect, an experimental research was performed to answer how to perform surface-wave tests and to analyze measurements at an embankment site with a sloping ground surface. Unlike flat ground surface, sloping ground may hamper and slow down propagation of surface waves due to multiple reflections and refractions in embankment. To figure out this reasoning for the effect of multiple reflections and refractions due to sloping surface, surface wave tests were performed at a reservoir embankment of Chung-Song in North KyeongSang Province. Parameters involved in surface wave tests at non-flat surface, including source directionality, geometry-related constraint and frequency components in source function, were investigated using field measurements.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.1101-1111
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• 2018

This study aims to present accurate soil modeling and validation of a single roadside guardrail post as well as a single concrete pile installed near cut slopes or compacted sloping embankment. The conventional Winkler's elastic spring model and p-y curve approach for horizontal ground cannot directly be applied to sloping ground where ultimate soil resistance is significantly dependent on ground inclination. In this study, both grid-based 3-D FE model and particle-based SPH (smoothed particle hydrodynamics) model available in LS-DYNA have been adopted to predict the static behavior of a laterally loaded guardrail post. The SPH model has potential to eliminate any artificial soil stiffness due to the deterioration of the node-connected Lagrangian soil mesh. For this purpose, this study comprises two parts. Firstly, only 3-D FE modeling has been tested to show the numerical validity for a single concrete pile in sloping ground using Mohr-Coulomb material. However, this material option cannot be implemented for SPH elements. Nevertheless, Mohr-Coulomb model has been used since this material model requires six input soil data that can be obtained from the comparative papers in literatures. Secondly, this work is extended to compute the lateral resistance of a guardrail post located near the slope using the hybrid approach that combines Lagrange FE elements and SPH elements by the suitable node-merging option provided by LS-DYNA. For this analysis, the FHWA soil material developed for application to road-base soils has been used and also allows the application of SPH element.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.3
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• pp.241-254
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• 2019

A finite element approach is presented to examine ground vibration characteristics under various moving loads in a homogeneous half-space. Four loading modes including single load, double load, four-load, and twenty-load were simulated in a finite element analysis to observe their influence on ground vibrations. Four load moving speeds of 60, 80, 100, and 120 m/s were adopted to investigate the influence of train speed to the ground vibrations. The results demonstrated that the loading mode in a finite element analysis is reliable for train-induced vibration simulations. Additionally, a three-dimensional finite element model (3D FEM) was developed to investigate the dynamic responses of a track-ballast-embankment-ground system subjected to moving loads induced by high-speed trains. Results showed that vibration attenuations and breaks exist in the simulated wave fronts transiting through different medium materials. These tendencies are a result of the difference in the Rayleigh wave speeds of the medium materials relative to the speed of the moving train. The vibration waves induced by train loading were greatly influenced by the weakening effect of sloping surfaces on the ballast and embankment. Moreover, these tendencies were significant when the vibration waves are at medium and high frequency levels. The vibration waves reflected by the sloping surface were trapped and dissipated within the track-ballast-embankment-ground system. Thus, the vibration amplitude outside the embankment was significantly reduced.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.579-586
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• 2022

Pile-supported structures are installed on saturated sloping grounds, where the ground stiffness may decrease due to liquefaction during earthquakes. Thus, it is important to consider saturated sloping ground and pile interactions. In this study, we conduct a centrifuge test of a pile-supported structure, and analyze the p-y_p loops, p-y_p loops provide the correlation between the lateral pile deflection (y_p) and lateral soil resistance (p). In the dry sand model (UV67), the p-y_p loops stiffness increased as ground depth increased, and the p-y_p loops stiffness was larger by approximately three times when the pile moved to the upslope direction, compared with when it moved to the downslope direction. In contrast, no significant difference was observed in the stiffness with the ground depth and pile moving direction in the saturated sand model (SV69). Furthermore, we identify the unstable zone based on the result of the lateral soil resistance (p). In the case of the SV69 model, the maximum depth of the unstable zone is five times larger than that of the dry sand model, and it was found that the saturated sand model was affected significantly by kinematic forces due to slope failure.