• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.03a
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• pp.607-614
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• 2010

Shear behavior of granular soils largely affects the safety and stability of underground and earth structures. This study presents the characteristics of shear zone in a direct shear test using shear wave and electrical resistivity measurements. An innovative direct shear box made of transparent acrylic material has been developed to prevent direct electric current. Bender elements and electrical resistivity probe are embedded in the wall of direct shear box to estimate the shear wave velocities and the electrical resistivity at the shear and non-shear zones. Experimental results show that the void ratio and shear wave velocity at shear zone increase during shearing while the values remain constant at non-shear zone. The results demonstrate correlation among the contact force, small strain shear modulus, and void ratio at shear zone. This study suggests that the application of the modified direct shear box including shear wave and electrical resistivity measurements may become an effective tool for analyzing soil behavior at shear zone.

• Transactions of the Korean Society of Mechanical Engineers A
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• v.33 no.11
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• pp.1249-1255
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• 2009

Cord-rubber composites widely used in tires show very complicated mechanical behavior such as nonlinearity and large deformation. Three-phase(cord, rubber and the interface) modeling has been used to analyze the stress distribution in the cord-rubber composites more accurately. In this study, finite element methods were performed using two-dimensional generalized plane strain element and plane strain element to investigate the stress distribution and effective modulus of cord-rubber composites. Neo Hookean model was used for rubber property and several interface properties were assumed for various loading directions. It was found that the interface properties affect the effective modulus and the distributions of shear stress.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.227-249
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• 2016

The objective of this work is to present a zeroth-order shear deformation theory for free vibration analysis of functionally graded (FG) nanoscale plates resting on elastic foundation. The model takes into consideration the influences of small scale and the parabolic variation of the transverse shear strains across the thickness of the nanoscale plate and thus, it avoids the employ use of shear correction factors. Also, in this present theory, the effect of transverse shear deformation is included in the axial displacements by using the shear forces instead of rotational displacements as in available high order plate theories. The material properties are supposed to be graded only in the thickness direction and the effective properties for the FG nanoscale plate are calculated by considering Mori-Tanaka homogenization scheme. The equations of motion are obtained using the nonlocal differential constitutive expressions of Eringen in conjunction with the zeroth-order shear deformation theory via Hamilton's principle. Numerical results for vibration of FG nanoscale plates resting on elastic foundations are presented and compared with the existing solutions. The influences of small scale, shear deformation, gradient index, Winkler modulus parameter and Pasternak shear modulus parameter on the vibration responses of the FG nanoscale plates are investigated.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.28 no.4
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• pp.385-396
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• 2022

The accurate determination of the subgrade reaction modulus (K_s) of soil is an important factor for geotechnical engineers. This study estimated the K_s of soft soil improved with floating deep cement mixing (DCM) columns. A novel prediction model was developed that emphasizes the accuracy of identifying the most significant parameters of K_s. Several multi-layer perceptron (MLP) models that were trained using the Levenberg Marquardt (LM) backpropagation method were developed to estimate K_s. The models were trained using a reliable database containing the results of 36 physical modelling tests. The input parameters were the undrained shear strength of the DCM columns, undrained shear strength of soft soil, area improvement ratio and length-to-diameter ratio of the DCM columns. Grey wolf optimization (GWO) was coupled with the MLPs to improve the performance indices of the MLPs. Sensitivity tests were carried out to determine the importance of the input parameters for prediction of K_s. The results showed that both the MLP-LM and MLP-GWO methods showed high ability to predict K_s. However, it was shown that MLP-GWO (R = 0.9917, MSE = 0.28 (MN/m²/m)) performed better than MLP-LM (R =0.9126, MSE =6.1916 (MN/m²/m)). This proves the greater reliability of the proposed hybrid model of MLP-GWO in approximating the subgrade reaction modulus of soft soil improved with floating DCM columns. The results revealed that the undrained shear strength of the soil was the most effective factor for estimation of K_s.

• Macromolecular Research
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• v.16 no.5
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• pp.411-417
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• 2008

The surfaces of henequen fibers, which can be obtained from the leaves of agave plants, were treated with two different media, tap water and sodium hydroxide, that underwent both soaking and ultrasonic methods for the fiber surface treatment. Various biocomposites were fabricated with untreated and treated, chopped henequen fibers and polypropylene using a compression molding method. The result is discussed in terms of interfacial shear strength, flexural properties, dynamic mechanical properties, and fracture surface observations of the biocomposites. The soaking (static method) and ultrasonic (dynamic method) treatments with tap water and sodium hydroxide at different concentrations and treatment times significantly influenced the interfacial, flexural and dynamic mechanical properties of henequen/polypropylene biocomposites. The alkali treatment was more effective than the water treatment in improving the interfacial and mechanical properties of randomly oriented, chopped henequen/PP bio-composites. In addition, the application of the ultrasonic method to each treatment was relatively more effective in increasing the properties than the soaking method, depending on the treatment medium and condition. The greatest improvement in the properties studied was achieved by ultrasonic alkalization of natural fibers, which was in agreement with the other results of interfacial shear strength, flexural strength and modulus, storage modulus, and fracture surfaces.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.29 no.2C
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• pp.51-58
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• 2009

In this study, the small strain shear moduli ($G_{max}$) of uncemented and gypsum-cemented sands are evaluated by performing a series of bender element tests on the specimens reconstituted in the calibration chamber. It is observed from the experimental results that $G_{max}$ of crushed-sands is about 35~50% smaller than that of natural sands. The increase in gypsum content is observed to result in an exponential increase of $G_{max}$ value. It is also shown that the relative density has more significant effect on $G_{max}$ of cemented sand, whereas the vertical effective stress has more significant influence on $G_{max}$ of uncemented one. A prediction equation for cemented sand is expressed as a function of gypsum content as well as void ratio and vertical effective stress.

• Interaction and multiscale mechanics
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.369-383
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• 2012

In this paper, soil-structure interaction analysis has been presented for beams resting on multilayered geosynthetic-reinforced granular fill-soft soil system. The soft soil and geosynthetic reinforcements are idealized as nonlinear springs and elastic membranes, respectively. The governing differential equations are solved by finite difference technique and the results are presented in non-dimensional form. It is observed from the study that use of geosynthetic reinforcement is not very effective for maximum settlement reduction in case of very rigid beam. Similarly the reinforcements are not effective for shear force reduction if the granular fill has very high shear modulus value. However, multilayered reinforced system is very effective for bending moment and differential settlement reduction.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.25 no.3
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• pp.207-219
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• 2021

Several additives are used to enhance the geotechnical properties (e.g., shear wave velocity, shear modulus) of soils to provide sustainable, economical and eco-friendly solutions in geotechnical and geo-environmental engineering. In this study, piezoelectric ring actuators are used to measure the shear wave velocity of unreinforced, fiber, cemented, and fiber reinforced cemented Toyoura sand. One dimensional oedometer tests are performed on medium dense specimens of Toyoura sand-cement-fiber-silica flour mixtures with different percentages of silica flour (0-42%), fiber and cement (e.g., 0-3%) additives. The experimental results indicate that behavior of the mixtures is significantly affected by the concentration of silica flour, fiber and cement additives. Results show that with the addition of 1-3% of PVA fibers, the shear wave velocity increases by only 1-3%. However, the addition of 1-4% of cement increases the shear wave velocity by 8-35%. 10.5-21% increase of silica flour reduces the shear wave velocity by 2-5% but adding 28-42% silica flour significantly reduces the shear wave velocity by 12-31%. In addition, the combined effect of cement and fibers was also found and with only 2% cement and 1% fiber, the shear wave velocity increase was found to be approximately 24% and with only 3% cement and 3% fibers this increased to 35%. The results from this study for the normalized shear modulus and normalized mean effective stress agree well with previous findings on pure Toyoura sand, Toyoura silty sand, fiber reinforced, fiber reinforced cemented Toyoura sand. Any variations are likely due to the difference in stress history (i.e., isotropic versus anisotropic consolidation) and the measurement method. In addition, these small discrepancies could be attributed to several other factors. The potential factors include the difference in specimen sizes, test devices, methods of analysis for the measurement of arrival time, the use of an appropriate Ko to convert the vertical stresses into mean effective stress, and sample preparation techniques. Lastly, it was investigated that there is a robust inverse relationship between α factor and 𝞫₀ exponent. It was found that less compressible soils exhibit higher 𝜶 factors and lower 𝞫₀ exponents.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.24 no.6
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• pp.727-740
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• 2006

A simple plane-strain solution is derived in this paper for the functionally graded multilayered isotropic elastic cylinder under static deformation. The solution is obtained using method of separation of variables and is expressed in terms of the summation of the Fourier series in the circumferential direction. While the solution for order n = 0 corresponds to the axisymmetric deformation, that for n = 2 includes the special deformation frequently utilized in the upper and lower bounds analysis. Numerical results for a three-phase cylinder with a middle functionally graded layer are presented for both axisymmetric (n = 0) and general (n = 2) deformations, under either the traction or displacement boundary conditions on the surface of the layered cylinder. The solution to the general deformation case (n = 2) is further utilized for the first time to find the upper and lower bounds of the effective shear modulus of the layered cylinder with a functionally graded middle layer. These results could be useful in the future study of cylindrical composites where FGMs and/or multilayers are involved.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.16 no.5 s.72
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• pp.671-682
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• 2004

This study investigated the effects of a shear slip on the deflection of steel-concretecomposite beams with partial shear interaction. Under the guidance of various current design codes, this deflection was related to the strength of shear connectors in the composite beams. In this paper, a shear connector stiffness based on exact solutions, regardless of loading conditions, was developed. The equivalent rigidity of composite beams that considered three different loading types was first derived, based on equilibrium and curvature compatibility, from which a general formula accounting for slips was developed. To validate this approach, the predicted maximum deflection under the proposed method was compared against currently used equations to calculate beam effective stiffness (AISC)Nie's equations, which have recently been proposed. For typical beams that were used in practice, shear slips might result in stiffness reduction of up to 18% for short-span beams. For full composite sections, the effective section modulus with the AISC specifications was larger than that of the present study, which meant that the specifications were not conservative. For partial composite sections, the AISC predictions were more conservative than those in the present study.