• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.23 no.6
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• pp.561-573
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• 2020

The creep and consolidation behaviors of clays subjected to thermal cycles are of fundamental importance in the application of energy geostructures. This study aims to numerically investigate the physical mechanisms for the temperature-triggered volume change of saturated clays. A recently developed thermodynamic framework is used to derive the thermo-mechanical constitutive model for clays. Based on the model, a fully coupled thermo-hydro-mechanical (THM) finite element (FE) code is developed. Comparison with experimental observations shows that the proposed FE code can well reproduce the irreversible thermal contraction of normally consolidated and lightly overconsolidated clays, as well as the thermal expansion of heavily overconsolidated clays under drained heating. Simulations reveal that excess pore pressure may accumulate in clay samples under triaxial drained conditions due to low permeability and high heating rate, resulting in thermally induced primary consolidation. Results show that four major mechanisms contribute to the thermal volume change of clays: (i) the principle of thermal expansion, (ii) the decrease of effective stress due to the accumulation of excess pore pressure, (iii) the thermal creep, and (iv) the thermally induced primary consolidation. The former two mechanisms mainly contribute to the thermal expansion of heavily overconsolidated clays, whereas the latter two contribute to the noticeable thermal contraction of normally consolidated and lightly overconsolidated clays. Consideration of the four physical mechanisms is important for the settlement prediction of energy geostructures, especially in soft soils.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.12 no.1
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• pp.63-86
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• 2022

A refined projection-based purely Lagrangian meshfree method is presented towards reliable numerical analysis of fluid flow interactions with saturated/unsaturated porous media of uniform/spatially-varying porosities. The governing equations are reformulated on the basis of two-phase mixture theory with incorporation of volume fraction. These principal equations of mixture are discretized in the context of Incompressible SPH (Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics) method. Associated with the consideration of governing equations of mixture, a new term arises in the source term of PPE (Poisson Pressure Equation), resulting in modified source term. The linear and nonlinear force terms are included in momentum equation to represent the resistance from porous media. Volume increase of fluid particles are taken into consideration on account of the presence of porous media, and hence multi-resolution ISPH framework is also incorporated. The stability and accuracy of the proposed method are thoroughly examined by reproducing several numerical examples including the interactions between fluid flow and saturated/unsaturated porous media of uniform/spatially-varying porosities. The method shows continuous pressure field, smooth variations of particle volumes and regular distributions of particles at the interface between fluid and porous media.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.32 no.4
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• pp.411-426
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• 2023

Soft clay is widely distributed in the southeast coastal areas of China. Many large underground structures, such as subway stations and underground pipe corridors, are shallow buried in the soft clay foundation, so the dynamic characteristics of the soft clay must be considered to the seismic design of underground structures. In this paper, the dynamic characteristics of saturated soft clay in Shanghai under the bidirectional excitation for earthquake loading are studied by dynamic triaxial tests, comparing the backbone curve and hysteretic curve of the saturated soft clay under different confining pressures with those under different vibration frequencies. Considering the coupling effects of the confining pressure and the vibration frequency, a fitting model of the maximum dynamic shear modulus was proposed by the multiple linear regression method. The M-D model was used to fit the variations of the dynamic shear modulus ratio with the shear strain. Based on the Chen model and the Park model, the effects of the consolidation confining pressure and the vibration frequency on the damping ratio were studied. The results can provide a reference to the earthquake prevention and disaster reduction in soft clay area.

• Journal of the Korean Geophysical Society
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• v.6 no.2
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• pp.49-56
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• 2003

Under the attack of storm waves, there are many destructions of coastal structures in the forms of sinking and sliding. There types of destructions will be in close relation to the dynamic behavior of sand bed around the structures. Form this point of view, in this pear, we investigate the characteristics of the pore water pressure and effective stresses in the highly saturated sand bed under oscillating water pressure theoretically. The results indicate that the oscillating water pressure induce the notable drop of strength of and bed around the structure under certain condition.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Marine Environment & Energy
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.8-12
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• 2014

Reduced pressure evaporation applies the principle of lowering water's boiling point by reducing the pressure. It uses the relation between temperature and pressure to reduce energy consumption needed for elevating temperature. As the result, the highest evaporation was observed at $80^{\circ}C$ and -40 cmHg applying saturated vapor pressure depending on different seawater temperature. It was found that the higher concentration in the factor test experiment depending on seawater concentration induced the higher evaporation. Also, in the factor test experiment, the amount of evaporation increased as the pressure decreased. It is concluded that the most important factor of evaporation was concentration, the second important factor was temperature, and the least important factor was pressure. Through this experiment, optimized conditions of desalination with reduced pressure evaporation device were verified.

• Proceedings of the Acoustical Society of Korea Conference
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• spring
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• pp.347-348
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• 2004

Nonlinear scattering of difference frequency acoustic wave in a water-saturated sandy sediment was investigated. Difference frequency acoustic wave was observed to be scattered due to the nonlinearity of water-saturated sandy sediment when the collinear acoustic waves with two different fundamental frequencies are incident on the sediment. The pressure level of the difference frequency acoustic wave was 6 dB higher than the background noise level. It seems very useful to evaluate the nonlinear parameter of water-saturated sandy sediment without disturbing the sediment. Such nonlinear acoustic response of water-saturated sandy sediment can be used as background acoustic data for estimating the gas void fraction in marine gassy sandy sedimen.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.421-438
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• 2016

Explosions inside transportation tunnels might result in failure of tunnel structures. This study investigated the failure mechanisms of circular cast-iron tunnels in saturated soil subjected to medium internal blast loading. This issue is crucial to tunnel safety as many transportation tunnels run through saturated soils. At the same time blast loading on saturated soils may induce residual excess pore pressure, which may result in soil liquefaction. A series of numerical simulations were carried out using Finite Element program LS-DYNA. The effect of soil liquefaction was simulated by the Federal Highway soil model. It was found that the failure modes of tunnel lining were differed with different levels of blast loading. The damage and failure of the tunnel lining was progressive in nature and they occurred mainly during lining vibration when the main event of blast loading was over. Soil liquefaction may lead to more severe failure of tunnel lining. Soil deformation and soil liquefaction were determined by the coupling effects of lining damage, lining vibration, and blast loading. The damage of tunnel lining was a result of internal blast loading as well as dynamic interaction between tunnel lining and saturated soil, and stress concentration induced by a ventilation shaft connected to the tunnel might result in more severe lining damage.

• Coupled systems mechanics
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• v.7 no.6
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• pp.649-668
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• 2018

In this paper, we present a numerical model for fluid-structure interaction between structure built of porous media and acoustic fluid, which provides both pore pressure inside porous media and hydrodynamic pressures and hydrodynamic forces exerted on the upstream face of the structure in an unified manner and simplifies fluid-structure interaction problems. The first original feature of the proposed model concerns the structure built of saturated porous medium whose response is obtained with coupled discrete beam lattice model, which is based on Voronoi cell representation with cohesive links as linear elastic Timoshenko beam finite elements. The motion of the pore fluid is governed by Darcy's law, and the coupling between the solid phase and the pore fluid is introduced in the model through Biot's porous media theory. The pore pressure field is discretized with CST (Constant Strain Triangle) finite elements, which coincide with Delaunay triangles. By exploiting Hammer quadrature rule for numerical integration on CST elements, and duality property between Voronoi diagram and Delaunay triangulation, the numerical implementation of the coupling results with an additional pore pressure degree of freedom placed at each node of a Timoshenko beam finite element. The second original point of the model concerns the motion of the outside fluid which is modeled with mixed displacement/pressure based formulation. The chosen finite element representations of the structure response and the outside fluid motion ensures for the structure and fluid finite elements to be connected directly at the common nodes at the fluid-structure interface, because they share both the displacement and the pressure degrees of freedom. Numerical simulations presented in this paper show an excellent agreement between the numerically obtained results and the analytical solutions.

• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.48 no.4
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• pp.67-74
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• 2006

This study was carried out to investigate the liquefaction behaviour of saturated silty sand under monotonic loading conditions. The undrained soil tests were conducted using a modified triaxial cell and specimens were prepared using the moisture tamping method. Undrained triaxial compression tests were performed at different confining pressures, void ratios and overconsolidation ratios and the samples were sheared to axial strains of about 20% to obtain monotonic loading conditions. It is shown that increasing confining pressures, void ratios and overconsoildation ratios increases the deviator stress, but it has no effect on increasing the dilatant tendencies. It is shown that complete static liquefaction was observed regardless of increases in the confining pressure, void ratio and overconsolidation ratio. Therefore, the confining pressure, void ratio and overconsoildation ratio does not provide significant effects on the liquefaction resistance of the silty sand. The presence of fines in the soil was shown to greatly increase the potential for static liquefaction and creates a particle structure with high compressibility for all cases.

• Proceedings of the Earthquake Engineering Society of Korea Conference
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• 1998.10a
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• pp.361-368
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• 1998

The purpose of this study is to find out the factors affacting liquefaction potential by using DSC(disturded state concept) method and to verify these results through cyclic shear test (truly triaxial test and cyclic triaxial) on saturated sandy soil. Based on this reserch, the DSC method predictions were found to provide satisfactory correlation with the cyclic shear test. And the relationship between the factors affecting liquefaction characteristics--relative density(Dr0 and initial effective confining pressure and physical properties of the saturated sand --ξD and Dc--is found. If the relative density and the initial effective confining pressure increase, the number of cyclic grows up. This means that Dc is incresed and ξD is decreased. Therefore, the liquefaction potential can be evaluated and the factors affacting liquefaction potential can be investigated by using on DSC method. Finally, it is shown that the DSC method can capture the liquefaction mechanism.