• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.77-86
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• 2008

The disturbance zone and measured values are affected by the size of the penetrometer. The local value may be measured by the smaller penetrometer. An ultra small Micro-Cone penetrometer (5mm in outer diameter) is designed and manufactured to characterize soil properties with minimum disturbance during penetration tests. The tip resistance is measured by using stain gauges attached near the Micro-Cone. In addition, the friction sleeve is adopted to effectively remove the skin friction from the tip resistance. Design concern includes the installation of stain gauges, circuits, penetration systems, penetration rate, sampling rate, operating temperature, and calibration. Application tests show that the clay interface, and the soil layers consisting of clay and sand are clearly detected by the Micro-Cone. Furthermore, the cone tip resistances measured by the Micro-Cone and the miniature cone (16mm in outer diameter) are similar. Note the resolution is much higher in the Micro-Cone. This study shows that the Micro-Cone may effectively detect the soil interface with high resolution, and with minimum disturbance.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.95-104
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• 2006

For the interests in the economical and safe design of foundation system, the concern on the piled raft or disconnected piled raft foundation system is increasing now. In this study, the behavior and the effects of the disconnected piled raft foundation not studied actively in this country were examined using the triaxial compression tests in place of laboratory model tests. The triaxial test samples were prepared with Jumunjin standard sand and the carbon rods, which simulate the ground soil and piles respectively. After the sample in which carbon rods were arranged was laid inside the triaxial chamber, the confining pressure was applied and then loading test was conducted. To analyze the reinforcing effects of the disconnected piled raft foundation, a few number of tests were carried out by changing the number, the diameter and the length of the model piles. As a result of this study, in the disconnected piled raft foundation system, even though the number of pile is few and the diameter of pile is small, the settlement of the foundation system decreased greatly.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.11-19
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• 2006

For the last decade, the hi-directional testing method has been advantageous over the conventional pile load testing method in many aspects. However, because the hi-directional test uses a loading mechanism entirely different from that of the conventional pile load testing method, many investigators and practicing engineers have been concerned that the hi-directional test would give inaccurate results, especially about the pile head settlement behavior. Therefore, a hi-directional load test and the conventional top-down load test were executed on 1.5 m diameter cast-in-situ concrete piles at the same time and site. Strain gauges were placed on the piles. The two tests gave similar load transfer curves at various depth of piles. However, the top-down equivalent curve constructed from the hi-directional load test results predicted the pile head settlement under the pile design load to be about one half of that predicted by the conventional top-down load test. To improve the prediction accuracy of the top-down equivalent curve, a simple method that accounts for the pile compression is proposed. It was also shown that the strain gauge measurement data from the hi-directional load test could reproduce almost the same top-down curve.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.15-26
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• 2006

Although numerous investigations have been performed over the years to predict the behavior and bearing capacity of piles, the mechanisms are not yet entirely understood. The prediction of bearing capacity is a difficult task, because large numbers of factors affect the capacity and also have complex relationship one another. Therefore, it is extremely difficult to search the essential factors among many factors, which are related with ground condition, pile type, driving condition and others, and then appropriately consider complicated relationship among the searched factors. The present paper describes the application of Artificial Neural Network (ANN) in predicting the capacity including its components at the tip and along the shaft from dynamic load test of the driven piles. Firstly, the effect of each factor on the value of bearing capacity is investigated on the basis of sensitivity analysis using ANN modeling. Secondly, the authors use the design methodology composed of ANN and genetic algorithm (GA) to find optimal neural network model to predict the bearing capacity. The authors allow this methodology to find the appropriate combination of input parameters, the number of hidden units and the transfer structure among the input, the hidden and the out layers. The results of this study indicate that the neural network model serves as a reliable and simple predictive tool for the bearing capacity of driven piles.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.67-76
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• 2006

The reasonable assessment of the shear stiffness of a dredged soft ground and soft clay is difficult due to the soil disturbance. This study addresses the development and application of a new in-situ shear wave measuring apparatus (field velocity probe: FVP), which overcomes several of the limitations of conventional methods. Design concerns of this new apparatus include the disturbance of soils, cross-talking between transducers, electromagnetic coupling between cables, self acoustic insulation, the constant travel distance of S-wave, the rotation of the transducer, directly transmitted wave through a frame from transducer to transducer, and protection of the transducer and the cable. These concerns are effectively eliminated by continuous improvements through performing field and laboratory tests. The shear wave velocity of the FVP is simply calculated, without any inversion process, by using the travel distance and the first arrival time. The developed FVP Is tested in soil up to 30m in depth. The experimental results show that the FVP can produce every detailed shear wave velocity profiles in sand and clay layers. In addition, the shear wave velocity at the tested site correlates well with the cone tip resistance. This study suggests that the FVP may be an effective technique for measuring the shear wave velocity in the field to assess dynamic soil properties in soft ground.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.22 no.12
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• pp.5-14
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• 2006

In general, the dredged ground was composed of a big difference of sediment shape through segregating sedimentary of finer soil in case of reclaiming by dredged coarse soils. Therefore, this study was performed to evaluate the change of settling velocity of flow, and the density of sedimentary which is based on settling tests and self-weight consolidation tests, and consolidation test by seepage force according to the percentage of coarse of Kunsan dredge soils. The Yano's method has been applied to estimate the settlement of self-weight consolidation in finer soils at design but it only considers pouring water content and elevation of interface, therefore the other method needs to be introduced for the exact prediction of the settlement of coarse soil in which the segregation sedimentation is occurring. In this study, the settlement of self-weight consolidation was calculated by the change of the density of segregating sedimentary of coarse and finer soils which was analyzed by Yano's method to extend a serious of researches. The self-weight consolidation by Yano's method will not reflect the segregated settling in dredging coarse soil under 40% of #200 passing percentage. As a result, the evaluation technique of settlement of self-weight consolidation considering a change of the density of segregating sedimentary is suggested as a reasonable method that considers the sediment shape of coarse soil.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.45-54
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• 2010

It is important to calculate the natural frequency of a piled structure in the design stage in order to prevent resonance-induced damage to the pile foundation and analyze the dynamic behavior of the piled structure during an earthquake. In this paper, a simple but relatively accurate method employing a mass-spring model is presented for the evaluation of the natural frequency of a pile-soil system. Greatly influencing the calculation of the natural frequency of a piled structure, the spring stiffness between a pile and soil was evaluated by using the coefficient of subgrade reaction, the p-y curve, and the subsoil elastic modulus. The resulting natural frequencies were compared with those of 1-g shaking table tests. The comparison showed that the natural frequency of the pile-soil system could be most accurately calculated by constructing a stiffness matrix with the spring stiffness of the Reese (1974) method, which utilizes the coefficient of the subgrade reaction modulus, and Yang's (2009) dynamic p-y backbone curve method. The calculated natural frequencies were within 5% error compared with those of the shaking table tests for the pile system in dry dense sand deposits and 5% to 40% error for the pile system in saturated sand deposits depending on the occurrence of excess pore water pressure in the soil.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.8
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• pp.33-45
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• 2009

The conventional single-core PBDs have been widely used in order to accelerate consolidation settlement of soft grounds. When using the single-core PBD in a thick clay deposit, a delay of consolidation may occur due to high confining pressure in the thick deposit and necking of drains. This study is to compare the performances of soil improvement by the single-core and double-core PBD installed at a site in Busan New Port which exhibits approximately a 40m-thick clay layer. An in-situ test program was performed at the test site where a set of the double-core PBDs and single-core PBDs were installed to compare the efficiency of each drain. In addition, the discharge capacity of each PBD has been measured using the modified Delft Test. A series of laboratory tests for estimating in-situ soil properties have also been performed in order to obtain input parameters for a numerical program ILLICON. The discharge capacity of the double-core PBD is higher than that of the single-core PBD in the modified Delft Test. However it is observed from the comparative in-situ test and numerical analysis that there is no difference in the performance of ground improvement between the two drain systems. This discrepancy comes from the fact that the amount of water released during consolidation in most common field conditions is much smaller than the capacity of even the single core PBD. And thus, considering actual field conditions, it can be concluded that the single-core PBD has enough discharge capacity even in the thick clay deposit such as this test site.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.25 no.4
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• pp.19-29
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• 2009

In this study, a numerical analysis was performed to predict the sequential behavior of anchored retaining wall where the failure accident took place, and verified accuracy of prediction through the comparisons between prediction and field measurement. The emphasis was given to the wall behaviors and the variation of sliding surface based on the two different methods of elasto-plastic and finite element (shear strength reduction technique). Through the comparison study, it is shown that the bending moment and the soil pressure at construction stages produce quite similar results in both the elasto-plastic and finite element method. However, predicted wall deflections using elasto-plastic method show underestimate results compared with measured deflections. This demonstrates that the elasto-plastic method does not clearly consider the influence of soil-wall-reinforcement interaction, so that the tension force (anchor force and earth pressure) on the wall is overestimated. Based on the results obtained, it is found that finite element method using shear strength reduction method can be effectively used to perform the back calculation analysis in the anchored retaining wall, whereas elasto-plastic method can be applicable to the preliminary design of retaining wall with suitable safety factor.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.23-32
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• 2010

This study was especially conducted to find out the characteristics of the lightweight air-mixed soil (slurry density 10 kN/$m^3$) containing silt related to water. Compression strength, permeability, and capillary height of the lightweight air-mixed soil were studied, and also to support these studies, the structure of that soil was analyzed in detail. Air bubbles of various sizes are inside the lightweight air-mixed soil, and its distribution in a location is almost constant. A numerous tiny pores are inside the air bubbles so that the lightweight air-mixed soil can be saturated with water. Porosity is also estimated through the image analysis. Peak strength of the lightweight air-mixed soil is not dependent on water, but behavior of stress-strain is affected by the water. Permeability is about $4.857{\times}10^{-6}cm/sec$, which is a little bit higher than the clay's permeability. Capillary rise occurs rapidly at the beginning of the test until the lapse of 100 minutes and then its increase rate becomes slow. The capillary rise causes the increase of the density of the lightweight air-mixed soil, and thus it is required to pay attention to this phenomenon during structure design and maintenance of the lightweight air-mixed soil.