• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.63-72
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• 2013

The structural stability of fill dam largely depends on the engineering behavior of rock materials used as main zone for dam construction and it is necessary to understand well the stress-strain characteristics of fill materials as well as shear strength property. In addition, the numerical analysis of fill dam requires a thorough study for calibrating material properties and parameters of a coarse-grained soil constitutive model. In this paper, large triaxial test results for Buhang-dam fill materials are analyzed and constitutive model parameters are calibrated based on the test results. It is shown that MD constitutive model is capable to predict the stress-strain behavior of dense and loose coarse-grained soils used for Buhang-dam construction based on the comparison study between the experimental test result and numerical simulation.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.21 no.11
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• pp.21-26
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• 2020

Natural soil is composed of particles of various sizes, and the shear behavior which is a kind of mechanical behavior of the soil is affected by the particle size distribution. In addition, since the natural soil contains a large mixture of coarse and fine grained soil, it is difficult to clearly understand the shear behavior of the soil. Therefore, a ring shear test was conducted on sandy soils that has various particle size distribution in order to identify the effect of the distribution on shear characteristics of soils. At this time, sand and silt were used for coarse and fine grained soils, respectively, to make sandy soils by changing the silt content. Also the water was supplied during the test to confirm shear characteristics of sandy soils with various particle size distributions. The result shows that the shear strength increases as the silt content increases, and the strength decreases as the silt content increases over the sand. Besides, residual shear strength gradually decreases because of the silt content when the water is supplied.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.4
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• pp.393-399
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• 2022

The Segregation Potential (SP) is one of the most widely used predictors of frost heave in cold regions. Laboratory step-freezing tests determining a representative SP at the onset of the formation of the last ice lens (near the thermal steady state condition) can predict susceptibility to frost heave. Previous work has proposed empirical semi-log fitting for determination of the representative SP and applied it to several fine-grained soils, but considering only frost-susceptible soils. The presence of fines in coarse-grained soil affects frost susceptibility. Therefore, it is required to evaluate the applicability of the empirical semi-log fitting for both frost-susceptible and non-frost-susceptible soils with fines content. This paper reports laboratory frost heave tests for fines contents of 5%-70%. The frost susceptibility of soil mixtures composed of sand and silt was classified by the representative SP, and the suitability of the empirical semi-log fitting method was assessed. Combining semi-log fitting with simple laboratory frost heave testing using a temperature-controllable cell is shown to be suitable for both frost-susceptible and non-frost-susceptible soils. In addition, initially non-frost-susceptible soil became frost susceptible at a 10%-20% weight fraction of fines. This threshold fines content matched well with transitions in the engineering characteristics of both the unfrozen and frozen soil mixtures.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.31 no.2
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• pp.223-235
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• 2022

Bearing capacity of shallow foundations is often determined for either dry or saturated soils. In some occasions, foundations may be subjected to external loading which is inclined and/or eccentric. In this study, the ultimate bearing capacity of shallow foundations resting on partially saturated coarse-grained cohesionless and fine-grained cohesive soils subjected to a wide range of combined vertical (V) - horizontal (H) - moment (M) loadings is rigorously evaluated using the well-established limit equilibrium method. The unified effective stress approach as well as the suction stress concept is effectively adopted so as to simulate the behaviour of the underlying unsaturated soil medium. In order to obtain the bearing capacity, four equilibrium equations are solved by adopting Coulomb failure mechanism and Bishop effective stress concept and also considering a linear variation of the induced matric suction beneath the foundation. The general failure loci of the shallow foundations resting on unsaturated soils at different hydraulic conditions are presented in V - H - M spaces. The results indicate that the matric suction has a marked influence on the bearing capacity of shallow foundations. In addition, the effect of induced suction on the ultimate bearing capacity of obliquely-loaded foundations is more pronounced than that of the eccentrically-loaded footings.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.455-465
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• 2006

In this study, the effect of scour was evaluated by regional and geotechnical characteristics and back data were accumulate for the design against scour through the local erosion characteristics evaluation of the Inchon coast. The erosion characteristics for the undisturbed soil samples collected near the main locations at the Incheon 2nd bridge, the Hwangyeong bridge, and a coast road in Songdo, are determined quantitatively through the scour rate tests. On the basic soil properties test, the bed around the Inchon coast chiefly consists of fined grained soils, and the soil samples were classified as silty clay(ML) or clay(CL) under the Unified Soil Classification System. On the scour rate test, the critical shear stress increases when the undrained shear strength increases as of the general trend of fine grained soils, and the average scour rate for the maximum velocity by 100 year flood is 173mm/hr at the Incheon 2nd bridge, 67mm/hr at the Hwangyeong bridge and 10mm/hr at a coast road in Songdo, respectively. Comparing to the scour rate of coarse grained soil, that of the bed around the Inchon coast is turned out to be very low. Therefore, the relative ability of the bed around the Inchon coast to resist erosion is assumed to be very high.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.326-330
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• 2009

In this study, coarse-grained geomaterials were mixed with cementing binder. To do that, typical soils from road construction sites were selected to assess the strength and stiffness characteristics of cemented geomaterials mixed with cement and recycled fly ash. Mechanistic evaluation on these samples was performed depending on the various binder contents. Increasing cementing content tend to increase the resilient modulus under repeated loadings and unconfined strength respectively. In addition, the toughness of cemented geomaterials was also estimated in order to check the ability to resisting fatigue failure.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.533-542
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• 2019

Geosynthetic reinforced soil method in coarse-grained soils has been widely used in last decades. Two effective factors on soil-geosynthetic interaction are confining stresses and loading rate in clay. In terms of methodology, one pull-out test with four different strain rates, namely 0.75, 1.25, 1.75 and 2.25 mm/min, and three different normal stresses equal to 20, 50, and 80 kg have been performed on specimens with dimensions of 30×30×17 cm in the saturated, consolidated condition. The obtained results have demonstrated that activation of geosynthetic strength at contact surface depends on the applied stress. In addition, the increase in normal stress would increase the shear strength at contact surface between clay and geogrid. Moreover, it is concluded that the strain rate increment would increase the shear strength.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.9
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• pp.45-59
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• 2006

The successful performance of any numerical geotechnical simulation depends on the accuracy and efficiency of the numerical implementation of constitutive model used to simulate the stress-strain (constitutive) response of the soil. The corner stone of the numerical implementation of constitutive models is the numerical integration of the incremental form of soil-plasticity constitutive equations over a discrete sequence of time steps. In this paper a well known two-surface soil plasticity model is implemented using a generalized implicit return mapping algorithm to arbitrary convex yield surfaces referred to as the Closest-Point-Projection method (CPPM). The two-surface model describes the nonlinear behavior of coarse-grained materials by incorporating a bounding surface concept together with isotropic and kinematic hardening as well as fabric formulation to account for the effect of fabric formation on the unloading response. In the course of investigating the performance of the CPPM integration method, it is proven that the algorithm is an accurate, robust, and efficient integration technique useful in finite element contexts. It is also shown that the algorithm produces a consistent tangent operator $\frac{d\sigma}{d\varepsilon}$ during the iterative process with quadratic convergence rate of the global iteration process.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.2
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• pp.179-187
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• 2020

Freezing-thawing cycles have significant effect on soils engineering behavior in frozen areas. This effect is more considerable in fine-graded than coarse-grained soils. The objective of this study is improving soil durability and strength in continues freezing-thawing cycles. For getting this purpose mixture of Polyvinyl Acetate (PVAc) and Ethylene Glycol Monobutyl Ether (EGBE) has been added to fine-grained soil and final prepared samples were tested at different freezing-thawing cycles. PVAc was mixed with 1%, 2% and 3% of soil weight. Half of PVAc weight was used as weight of EGBE. Freezing-Thawing cycles were exposed to samples and they were tested at different cycles. Results showed that adding mixture of PVAc+EGBE improved strength and durability of samples up to 10 freezing-thawing cycles. Unconfined compress strength tests were applied to samples and stress and strain of samples were tested on failure time. Behavior of samples was different at different percentages of mixture. Results showed that increasing amount of PVAc from 1% to 2% had more considerable effect on final stress than 2% to 3%. Using higher percentages of PVAc + EGBE mixture leaded to that samples carried more strain before collapsing. Another result gained from tests was that, freezing-thawing effect was more considerable after fourth cycles. It means differences between first and fourth cycles were more considerable than differences between fourth and tenth.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.12 no.8
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• pp.13-24
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• 2011

In the part of geotechnical engineering, soils are classified as either the coarse grained soil or the fine-grained soil following the fine content($F_c$=50%) according to the granularity, and appropriate design codes are used respectively to represent their mechanical behaviour. However, sand-clay mixtures, which are typically referred to as intermediate soils, cannot be easily categorized as either sand or clay. In this study, several monotonic undrained shear tests were carried out on Silica sand fine mixtures with various proportions, and a wide range of soil structures, ranging from one with sand dominating the soil structure to one with fines controlling the behaviour, were prepared using compaction method or pre-consoldation methods in prescribed energy. The shear strength of mixtures below the threshold fines content is observed that as the fines content increases, maximum deviator stress ratio decrease for dense samples while an increase is noted for loose samples. Then, by using the concept of fines content and granular void ratio, the monotonic shear strength of the mixtures was estimated. It was found that the shear behavior of mixtures is greatly dependent on the skeleton structure of sand particles.