• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.12 no.6
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• pp.615-632
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• 2001

Ductility of open piled wharves under reversed cyclic loads has been investigated. Experimental testing of five wharf models having a scale of about 1:4 was conducted under the application of horizontal reversed cyclic loading. The experiments were designed to focus on the horizontal ultimate load, ductility and failure mode of the considered wharf models. Nonlinear numerical analyses using the finite element method were also performed on numerical models representing the experimentally tested wharves. The results of the experimental tests showed that open piled wharves possessed favourable ductile behaviour and that their load bearing capacity did not depreciate until a ductility factor of 3 to 4 was reached. The numerical analysis showed that the relative rotation that took place at the joints between the steel piles and the R.C. beam was responsible for a considerable portion of the total horizontal deformation of the wharves. Therefore, it was concluded that introducing the joint stiffness in calculating the deformations of open piled wharves was important to achieve reasonable accuracy.

• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.43 no.6
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• pp.489-498
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• 2011

UK National Nuclear Laboratory's (NNL's) version of the ENIGMA fuel performance code is described, including details of the development history, the system modelled, the key assumptions, the thermo-mechanical solution scheme, and the various incorporated models. The recent development of ENIGMA in the areas of whole core analysis and dry storage applications is then discussed. With respect to the former, the NEXUS code has been developed by NNL to automate whole core fuel performance modelling for an LWR core, using ENIGMA as the underlying fuel performance engine. NEXUS runs on NNL's GEMSTONE high performance computing cluster and utilises 3-D core power distribution data obtained from the output of Studsvik Scandpower's SIMULATE code. With respect to the latter, ENIGMA has been developed such that it can model the thermo-mechanical behaviour of a given LWR fuel rod during irradiation, pond cooling, drying, and dry storage - this involved: (a) incorporating an out-of-pile clad creep model for irradiated Zircaloy-4; (b) including the ability to simulate annealing out of the clad irradiation damage; (c) writing of additional post-irradiation output; (d) several other minor modifications to allow modelling of post-irradiation conditions.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.29 no.3
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• pp.327-349
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• 2008

Some unreasonable results from the use of a popular thick plate element are discovered from the analysis of a raft foundation and a pile cap in Hong Kong. To overcome the problems, the authors have developed a new shear deformable beam which can be extended to a general quadrilateral shear deformable plate. The behaviour of this new element under several interesting cases is investigated, and it is demonstrated that the new element possesses very high accuracy under different depth/span ratios, and the results from this new element are good even for a coarse mesh.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.26 no.1
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• pp.59-78
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• 2024

In tunnel construction, the stability is evaluated by the settlement of adjacent structures and ground, but the shear strain of the ground is the main factor that determines the failure mechanism of the ground due to the tunnel excavation and the change of the operating load, and can be used to review the stability of the tunnel excavation and to calculate the reinforcement area. In this study, a twin tunnel excavation was simulated on a soft ground in an urban area through a laboratory model test to analyze the behavior of the twin tunnel excavation on the adjacent pile grouped foundation and adjacent ground. Both the displacement and the shear strain of ground were obtained using a close-range photogrammetry during laboratory model test. In addition, two-dimensional finite element numerical analysis was performed based on the model test. The results of a back-analysis showed that the maximum shear strain rate tends to decrease as the horizontal distance between the pillars of the twin tunnel and the vertical distance between the toe of the pile group and the crown of the tunnel were decreased. The impact of the second tunnel on the first tunnel and pile group was decreased as the horizontal distance between the pillars of the twin tunnel was increased. In addition, the vertical distance between the toe of the pile group and the crown of the tunnel had a relatively greater impact on the shear strain results than the horizontal distance of the pillars between the twin tunnels. According to the results of the close-range photogrammetry and numerical analysis, the settlement of adjacent pile group and adjacent ground was measured within the design criteria, but the shear strain of the ground was judged to be outside the range of small strain in all cases and required reinforcement.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.75-86
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• 2020

This study aims to simulate the stabilization process of fibrous peat samples using end-bearing Cement Deep Mixing (CDM) columns by three area improvement ratios of 13.1% (TS-2), 19.6% (TS-3) and 26.2% (TS-3). It also focuses on the determination of approximate stress distribution between CDM columns and untreated fibrous peat soil. First, fibrous peat samples were mechanically stabilized using CDM columns of different area improvement ratio. Further, the ultimate bearing capacity of a rectangular foundation rested on the stabilized peat was calculated in stress-controlled condition. Then, this process was simulated via a FEM-based model using Plaxis 3-D foundation and the numerical modelling results were compared with experimental findings. In the numerical modelling stage, the behaviour of fibrous peat was simulated based on hardening soil (HS) model and Mohr-Coulomb (MC) model, while embedded pile element was utilized for CDM columns. The results indicated that in case of untreated peat HS model could predict the behaviour of fibrous peat better than MC model. The comparison between experimental and numerical investigations showed that the stress distribution between soil (S) and CDM columns (C) were 81%C-19%S (TS-2), 83%C-17%S (TS-3) and 89%C-11%S (TS-4), respectively. This implies that when the area improvement ratio is increased, the share of the CDM columns from final load was increased. Finally, the calculated bearing capacity factors were compared with results on the account of empirical design methods.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.427-443
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• 2023

Across the globe, rapid urbanization demands the construction of basements for car parking and sub way station within the vicinity of high-rise buildings supported on piled raft foundations. As a consequence, ground movements caused by such excavations could interfere with the serviceability of the building and the piled raft as well. Hence, the prediction of the building responses to the adjacent excavations is of utmost importance. This study used three-dimensional numerical modelling to capture the effects of twin excavations (final depth of each excavation, H_e=24 m) on a 20-storey building resting on (4×4) piled raft. Because the considered structure, pile foundation, and soil deposit are three-dimensional in nature, the adopted three-dimensional numerical modelling can provide a more realistic simulation to capture responses of the system. The hypoplastic constitutive model was used to capture soil behaviour. The concrete damaged plasticity (CDP) model was used to capture the cracking behaviour in the concrete beams, columns and piles. The computed results revealed that the first excavation- induced substantial differential settlement (i.e., tilting) in the adjacent high-rise building while second excavation caused the building tilt back with smaller rate. As a result, the building remains tilted towards the first excavation with final value of tilting of 0.28%. Consequently, the most severe tensile cracking damage at the bottom of two middle columns. At the end of twin excavations, the building load resisted by the raft reduced to half of that the load before the excavations. The reduced load transferred to the piles resulting in increment of the axial load along the entire length of piles.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2010.09a
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• pp.825-839
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• 2010

The global and domestic market for offshore wind farm is expected to grow fast, and the design and installation of substructure and foundation is getting more important. As for the offshore wind farms located in the shallow(depth < 20m) water, the construction and installation of the substructure and foundation makes up about 1/4 ~1/3 of the offshore wind farm construction cost, and the portion is expected to increase because the turbine capacity is increasing from 2 ~ 3MW to 5MW or larger and the water depth of wind farms is also increasing over 30m. As a foundation for offshore wind turbine, the suction caisson foundation is being considered to be a highly competitive alternative to the conventional monopile or gravity based structure, because it has features suitable for the offshore construction such as quick installation, no heavy equipment for penetration and no hammering noise for driving. In order to study the installation behaviour of the suction caisson, laboratory tests were performed with sand. The pore water pressure and displacement were measured to analyze the suction pressure during penetration, the penetration speed and the amount of heaving.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.18 no.1
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• pp.7-16
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• 2008

Limestone area have mostly certain geological defects such as the internal cavities due to melting and fractured zone by external pressures. Especially, in case of constructing grand bridge, the treatment of the limestone cavities area having the geological defects is inevitable. In order to reduce foundation settlement and to reinforce the ground in the limestone cavities area, high pressure jet grouting has been carried out as a countermeasure method. Despite the fact that high pressure jet grouting method has already adopted at a lot of limestone cavities area, but the amount of research and technical data on the high pressure jet grouting have not been accumulated properly so for. Therefore this paper intends to investigate the strength characteristics and deformation characteristics for reinforced limestone cavities area by high pressure jet grouting method. In addition, load carrying capacity obtained by static pile load test with load transfer measuring system is analyzed.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.2
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• pp.295-312
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• 2017

Cast in situ and grouted concrete helical piles with 150-200 mm diameter half cylindrical ribs have become an economical and effective choice in Shanghai, China for uplift piles in deep soft soils. Though this type of pile has been successful used in practice, the reinforcing mechanism and the contribution of the ribs to the total resistance is not clear, and there is no clear guideline for the design of such piles. To study the inclusion of ribs to the contribution of shear resistance, the shear behaviour between silty sand and concrete slabs with parallel ribs at different spacing and angles were tested in a large direct shear box ($600mm{\times}400mm{\times}200mm$). The front panels of the shear box are detachable to observe the soil deformation after the test. The tests were modelled with three-dimensional finite element method in ABAQUS. It was found that, passive zones can be developed ahead of the ribs to form undulated failure surfaces. The shear resistance and failure mode are affected by the ratio of rib spacing to rib diameter. Based on the shape and continuity of the failure zones at the interface, the failure modes at the interface can be classified as "punching", "local" or "general" shear failure respectively. With the inclusion of the ribs, the pull out resistance can increase up to 17%. The optimum rib spacing to rib diameter ratio was found to be around 7 based on the observed experimental results and the numerical modelling.