• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.39-50
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• 2020

In order to understand the shear mechanical properties of the interface between clay and structure and better serve the practical engineering projects, it is critical to conduct shear tests on the clay-structure interface. In this work, the direct shear test of clay-concrete slab with different joint roughness coefficient (JRC) of the interface and different normal stress is performed in the laboratory. Our experimental results show that (1) shear strength of the interface between clay and structure is greatly affected by the change of normal stress under the same condition of JRC and shear stress of the interface gradually increases with increasing normal stress; (2) there is a critical value JRC_cr in the roughness coefficient of the interface; (3) the relationship between shear strength and normal stress can be described by the Mohr Coulomb failure criterion, and the cohesion and friction angle of the interface under different roughness conditions can be calculated accordingly. We find that there also exists a critical value JRC_cr for cohesion and the cohesion of the interface increases first and then decreases as JRC increases. Moreover, the friction angle of the interface fluctuates with the change of JRC and it is always smaller than the internal friction angle of clay used in this experiment; (4) the failure type of the interface of the clay-concrete slab is type I sliding failure and does not change with varying JRC when the normal stress is small enough. When the normal stress increases to a certain extent, the failure type of the interface will gradually change from shear failure to type II sliding failure with the increment of JRC.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.2
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• pp.145-156
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• 2024

The mechanical properties of the concrete-frozen soil interface play a significant role in the stability and service performance of construction projects in cold regions. Current research mainly focuses on the precast concrete-frozen soil interface, with limited consideration for the more realistic cast-in-place concrete-frozen soil interface. The two construction methods result in completely different contact surface morphologies and exhibit significant differences in mechanical properties. Therefore, this study selects silty clay as the research object and conducts direct shear tests on the concrete-frozen soil interface under conditions of initial water content ranging from 12% to 24%, normal stress from 50 kPa to 300 kPa, and freezing temperature of -3℃. The results indicate that (1) both interface shear stress-displacement curves can be divided into three stages: rapid growth of shear stress, softening of shear stress after peak, and residual stability; (2) the peak strength of both interfaces increases initially and then decreases with an increase in water content, while residual strength is relatively less affected by water content; (3) peak strength and residual strength are linearly positively correlated with normal stress, and the strength of ice bonding is less affected by normal stress; (4) the mechanical properties of the cast-in-place concrete-frozen soil interface are significantly better than those of the precast concrete-frozen soil interface. However, when the water content is high, the former's mechanical performance deteriorates much more than the latter, leading to severe strength loss. Therefore, in practical engineering, cast-in-place concrete construction is preferred in cases of higher negative temperatures and lower water content, while precast concrete construction is considered in cases of lower negative temperatures and higher water content. This study provides reference for the construction of frozen soil-structure interface in cold regions and basic data support for improving the stability and service performance of cold region engineering.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.23 no.1
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• pp.81-90
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• 2019

The shear behavior of soil-concrete interface is mainly affected by the surface roughness of the two contact surfaces. The present research emphasizes on investigating the effect of roughness of soil-concrete interface on the interface shear behavior in two-layered laboratory testing samples. In these specially prepared samples, clay silt layer with density of $2027kg/m^3$ was selected to be in contact a concrete layer for simplifying the laboratory testing. The particle size testing and direct shear tests are performed to determine the appropriate particles sizes and their shear strength properties such as cohesion and friction angle. Then, the surface undulations in form of teeth are provided on the surfaces of both concrete and soil layers in different testing carried out on these mixed specimens. The soil-concrete samples are prepared in form of cubes of 10*10*30 cm. in dimension. The undulations (inter-surface roughness) are provided in form of one tooth or two teeth having angles $15^{\circ}$ and $30^{\circ}$, respectively. Several direct shear tests were carried out under four different normal loads of 80, 150, 300 and 500 KPa with a constant displacement rate of 0.02 mm/min. These testing results show that the shear failure mechanism is affected by the tooth number, the roughness angle and the applied normal stress on the sample. The teeth are sheared from the base under low normal load while the oblique cracks may lead to a failure under a higher normal load. As the number of teeth increase the shear strength of the sample also increases. When the tooth roughness angle increases a wider portion of the tooth base will be failed which means the shear strength of the sample is increased.

• Wind and Structures
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.75-87
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• 2018

A large number of low-rise buildings experienced serious roof covering failures under strong wind while few suffered structural damage. Clay and concrete tiles are two main kinds of roof covering. For the tile roof system, few researches were carried out based on Finite Element (FE) analysis due to the difficulty in the simulation of the interface between the tiles and the roof sheathing (the bonding materials, foam or mortar). In this paper, the FE analysis of a single clay or concrete tile with foam-set or mortar-set were built with the interface simulated by the equivalent nonlinear springs based on the mechanical uplift and displacement tests, and they were expanded into the whole roof. A detailed wind tunnel test was carried out at Tongji University to acquire the wind loads on these two kinds of roof tiles, and then the test data were fed into the FE analysis. For the purpose of validation and calibration, the results of FE analysis were compared with the full-scale performance ofthe tile roofs under simulated strong wind impact through one-of-a-kind Wall of Wind (WoW) apparatus at Florida International University. The results are consistent with the WoW test that the roof of concrete tiles with mortar-set provided the highest resistance, and the material defects or improper construction practices are the key factors to induce the roof tiles' failure. Meanwhile, the staggered setting of concrete tiles would help develop an interlocking mechanism between the tiles and increase their resistance.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.281-290
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• 2022

The direct shear test is commonly used to evaluate the shear behavior of frozen soil-structure interfaces under normal stress. However, failure criteria, such as the Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion, are needed to obtain the unconfined shear strength. Hence, the punch shear test, which is usually used to estimate the shear strength of rocks without confinement, was examined in this study to directly determine the adfreezing strength. It is measured as the shear strength of the frozen soil-structure interface under unconfined conditions. Different soils of silica sand, field sand, and field clay were prepared inside the steel and concrete ring structures. Soil and ring structures were frozen at the target temperature for more than 24 h. A punch shear test was then conducted. The test results show that the adfreezing strength increased with a decrease in the target temperature and increase in the initial water content, owing to the increase in ice content. The adfreezing strength of field clay was the smallest when compared with the other soil specimens because of the large amount of unfrozen water content. The field sand with the larger normalized roughness showed greater adfreezing strength than the silica sand with a lower normalized roughness. From the experiment and analysis, the applicability of the punch shear test was examined to measure the adfreezing strength of the frozen soil-structure interface. To find a proper sample dimension, supplementary experiments or numerical analysis will be needed in further research.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.5
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• pp.5-17
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• 2022

A pile is a type of medium for constructing superstructures in weak geotechnical conditions. A pretensioned spun high-strength concrete (PHC) pile is composed of high-strength concrete with a specified strength greater than 80 MPa. Therefore, it has advantages in resistance to axial and bending moments and quality control and management since it is manufactured in a factory. However, the skin friction of a pile, which accounts for a large portion of the pile bearing capacity, is only approximated using empirical equations or standard penetration test (SPT) N-values. Particularly, there are some poor research results on the pile-soil interface under the seismic loads in Korea. Additionally, some studies do not consider geoenvironmental elements, such as groundwater pH values. This study performs sets of cyclic simple shear tests using submerged concrete specimens for 1 month to consider pH values of groundwater and clay specimens composed of kaolinite to generate a pile-soil interface. 0.2 and 0.4 MPa of normal stress conditions are considered in the case of pH values. The disturbed state concept is employed to express the dynamic behavior of the interface, and the disturbed function parameters are newly suggested. Consequently, the largest disturbance increase under basic conditions is observed, and an early approach to the failure under low normal stress conditions is presented. The disturbance function parameters are also suggested to express this disposition quantitatively.

• Journal of the Korean Recycled Construction Resources Institute
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.498-505
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• 2020

Aggregate occupies about 70-85% of the concrete volume and is an important factor in reducing the drying shrinkage of concrete. However, when constructing high-rise buildings, it acts as a problem due to the high load of natural aggregates. If the load becomes large during the construction of a high-rise building, creep may occur and the ground may be eroded. Material costs increase and there are financial problems. In order to reduce the load on concrete, we are working to reduce the weight of aggregates. However, artificial lightweight aggregates affect the interface between the aggregate and the paste due to its higher absorption rate and lower adhesion strength than natural aggregates, affecting the overall strength of concrete. Therefore, in this study, in order to grasp the interface between natural aggregate and lightweight aggregate by type, we adopted a method of measuring electrical resistance using an EIS measuring device, which is a non-destructive test, and lightweight bone. The change in the state of the interface was tested on the outside of the material through a blast furnace slag coating. As a result of the experiment, it was confirmed that the electric resistance was about 90% lower than that in the air-dried state through the electrolyte immersion, and the electric resistance differs depending on the type of aggregate and the presence or absence of coating. As a result of the experiment, the difference in compressive strength depending on the type of aggregate and the presence or absence of coating was shown, and the difference in impedance value and phase angle for each type of lightweight aggregate was shown.