• Geotechnical Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.63-72
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• 1996

The current practice in construction of reinforced earth retaining walls is to use a granular soil for the backfill material. When the material is available in site, the construetion cost can be remarkably reduced. As the weathered granite soils are abundant and widely distributed throughout the Korean peninsula: whether they are suitable or not as the backfill material is considered to be the most important key in economic construction of the wall. This paper investigates the grain size distribution of the weathered soils which locate at many places throughout the nation and then examines limitation of their use based on the specifications of different countries. The variaton of shear strength with both different fine contents and saturation is also investigated. It is known that the grain size distribution of most weathered soils are not satisfied with the general requirement. However their use is possible in wide range when the backfill keeps in unsaturated condition using good drainage facilities and 1 or pervious reinforcements.

• Journal of the Korea institute for structural maintenance and inspection
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.103-112
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• 2019

This study proposes a system to control the bulging phenomenon occurring in the reinforced earth retaining wall and to evaluate the reliability of the system by field experiment. In this study, drainage facilities were not installed in order to induce reinforcement earth retaining wall bulging, and the bulging was induced by rainfall. The induced bulging displacement exceeded the horizontal displacement criterion during the construction of FHWA. The retaining wall block was drilled and grouting was performed by inserting the nail into the drilling hole. The wire mesh is installed on the reinforcing surface and the head of the nail is connected horizontally so that the blocks of the reinforcing earth retaining wall can be supported with each other. In order to protect the reinforcements, the reinforcement surface was closed with shotcrete and a measuring device was installed to detect the progress of the displacement. After the reinforcement, the bulging were not found to progress any more, confirming the reliability of the system.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.6 no.1
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• pp.73-82
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• 2005

Generally, to evaluate a slope stability of the geosynthetic reinforced soil slope, the modified version of limit equilibrium method can be used. In most cases, resisting effects of reinforcement are dealt with considering an increased shear strength on the potential slip surface. However, it is not clear that the methods satisfy all three equilibrium equations. In this study, the new slope stability analysis method in which not only reinforcing effects of geosynthetics can be considered but also all three equilibrium equation can be satisfied is proposed. A number of illustrative examples, including published load test of large-scale reinforced retaining wall and centrifuge model tests on the geotextile reinforced soil slopes, are also analyzed. As a result, it is shown that the newly suggested method produces a relatively accurate factor of safety.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.67-73
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• 2010

The most important thing in the design of the reinforced earth retaining wall is to obtain the good backfill materials. However there was a special case using soils mixed with the crushed stone, because the field ran short of good backfill soils. Accordingly in this study various kind of tests were performed according to the mixing content of a crushed stone, which are the gradation curve, the direct shear test and the pullout test. From the test results at first the gradation of soils mixed with crushed stone has been compared with the selecting standard as backfill of reinforced earth wall. And the gradation standard has been satisfied in case of mixing ratio 20% of a crushed stone under 19mm. Also the direct shear test and the pullout test have been performed and at the test results the shear strength parameter and the pullout strength parameter were increased with the increse of the mixing content of a crushed stone. It has been thought that this study will give important data to a designer in designing the reinforced earth wall with soils mixed with crush stones.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.1014-1023
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• 2006

Soil nailing is a reinforcement method used for stabilizing excavated wall or slope. Due to its many advantages such as ease of construction and economical efficiency, use of soil nailing is increased. However, the soil nail can't trespass on the neighbor private land, which pays rent for use. For this reason, removable soil nailing system was developed. However, the removal rate of this system is just about $50\sim70%$. To solve this, the Fiber Reinforced Polymer (FRP) soil nailing system, which does not need to be removed and allows for the trespass on the private land, is developed. In this paper, through theoretical and experimental studies in laboratory and field, we evaluate the stability and behavior characteristics of the FRP nail system. Besides, numerical analyses using FLAC2D were performed for various soil conditions, where the simulations for pullout tests were carried out. As a result, compared with the conventional removable soil nailing system, the FRP soil nailing systems show similar behavior characteristics.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.191-205
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• 2020

Soil shear strength parameters play a remarkable role in designing geotechnical structures such as retaining wall and dam. This study puts an effort to propose two accurate and practical predictive models of soil shear strength parameters via hybrid artificial neural network (ANN)-based models namely genetic algorithm (GA)-ANN and particle swarm optimization (PSO)-ANN. To reach the aim of this study, a series of consolidated undrained Triaxial tests were conducted to survey inherent strength increase due to addition of polypropylene fibers to sandy soil. Fiber material with different lengths and percentages were considered to be mixed with sandy soil to evaluate cohesion (as one of shear strength parameter) values. The obtained results from laboratory tests showed that fiber percentage, fiber length, deviator stress and pore water pressure have a significant impact on cohesion values and due to that, these parameters were selected as model inputs. Many GA-ANN and PSO-ANN models were constructed based on the most effective parameters of these models. Based on the simulation results and the computed indices' values, it is observed that the developed GA-ANN model with training and testing coefficient of determination values of 0.957 and 0.950, respectively, performs better than the proposed PSO-ANN model giving coefficient of determination values of 0.938 and 0.943 for training and testing sets, respectively. Therefore, GA-ANN can provide a new applicable model to effectively predict cohesion of fiber-reinforced sandy soil.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.6
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• pp.563-573
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• 2024

In this study, various countermeasures used to mitigate tunnel deformations due to nearby multi-propped basement excavation in soft clay are explored by three-dimensional numerical analyses. Field measurements are used to calibrate the numerical model and model parameters. Since concrete slabs can constrain soil and retaining wall movements, tunnel movements reach the maximum value when soils are excavated to the formation level of basement. Deformation shapes of an existing tunnel due to adjacent basement excavation are greatly affected by relative position between tunnel and basement. When the tunnel is located above or far below the formation level of basement, it elongates downward-toward or upward-toward the basement, respectively. It is found that tunnel movements concentrate in a triangular zone with a width of 2 H_e (i.e., final excavation depth) and a depth of 1 D (i.e., tunnel diameter) above or 1 D below the formation level of basement. By increasing retaining wall thickness from 0.4 m to 0.9 m, tunnel movements decrease by up to 56.7%. Moreover, tunnel movements are reduced by up to 80.7% and 61.3%, respectively, when the entire depth and width of soil within basement are reinforced. Installation of isolation wall can greatly reduce tunnel movements due to adjacent basement excavation, especially for tunnel with a shallow burial depth. The effectiveness of isolation wall to reduce tunnel movement is negligible unless the wall reaches the level of tunnel invert.

• Land and Housing Review
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.97-108
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• 2021

In bridge abutment structures, lateral squeeze due to lateral stress of embankment placement and thermal movement of the bridge structure leads to failure of approach slabs, girders, and bridge bearings. Recently, GRS (Geosynthetic-Reinforced Soil) integral bridge has been proposed as a new countermeasure. The GRS integral bridge is a combining structure of a GRS retaining wall and an integral abutment bridge. In this study, numerical analyses which considered construction sequences and earthquake loading conditions are performed to compare the behaviors of conventional PSC (Pre-Stressed Concrete) girder bridge, traditional GRS integral bridge structure and GRS integral bridge with bracket structures (newly developed LH-type GRS integral bridge). The analysis results show that the GRS integral bridge with bracket structures is most stable compared with the others in an aspect of stress concentration and deformation on foundation ground including differential settlements between abutment and backfill. Furthermore, the GRS integral bridge with/without bracket structures was found to show the best performance in terms of seismic stability.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.4
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• pp.25-32
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• 2007

Because of the increasing use of clayey soil as the backfill in reinfurced soil structures and embankments, nonwoven geotextiles of drain capability have been receiving much attention. However, there are few studies on the deformation behavior analysis of nonwoven geotextiles in reinforced soil structures in the site because nonwoven geotextiles which have low tensile stiffness and higher deformability than geogrids and woven geotextiles, are difficult to measure their deformation by using strain gauges. In this study, it was suggested that a new and more convenient method could measure the deformation behaviour of nonwoven geotextile using a strain gauge and examine the availability of the method by conducting laboratory tests and applying to two geosynthetics reinforced soil (GRS) walls in the site. The result of wide-width tensile test conducted under confining pressure of 70 kPa shows that the local deformation of nonwoven geotextile to be measured with strain gauges has a similar pattern to the total deformation measured with LVDT. In the GRS walls, nonwoven geotextile shows a larger deformation range than the woven geotextile and geogrid. However, the deformation patterns of these three reinforcement materials are similar. The function of strain gauges attached to nonwoven geotextile in the walls works normally for 16 months. Therefore, the method proposed in this study for measuring nonwoven geotextile deformation using a strain gauge has proved useful.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.11 no.1
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• pp.141-163
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• 2016

Fiber models have been developed and applied to various structural elements such as shear walls, beams and columns. Only scarcely have fiber models been applied to circular foundation systems such as cast in drilled holes shafts (CIDH). In pile foundations with constraint head boundary conditions, shear deformations can easily contribute to the lateral pile response. However, soil structure interaction formulations such as the p-y method, commonly used for lateral pile design, do not include structural shear deformations in its traditional derivation method. A fiber model that couples shear and axial-bending behavior, originally developed for wall elements was modified and validated on circular cross sections (columns) before being applied to a 0.61 m diameter reinforced concrete (RC) pile with fixed head boundary conditions. The analytical response was compared to measured test results of a fixed head test pile to investigate the possible impact of pile shear deformations on the displacement, shear, and moment profiles of the pile. Results showed that shear displacements and forces are not negligible and suggest that nonlinear shear deformations for RC piles should be considered for fixed-head or similar conditions. Appropriate sensor layout is recommended to capture shear deformation when deriving p-y curves from field measurements.