• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.12
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• pp.33-42
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• 2007

The assessment of shear wave velocity($V_s$) in soft soils is extremely difficult due to the soil disturbances during sampling and field access. After a ring type field $V_s$ probe(FVP) has been developed, it has been applied at the southern coastal area of the Korean peninsular. This study presents the upgraded FVP "blade type FVP", which minimizes soil disturbance during penetration. Design concerns of the blade type FVP include the tip shape, soil disturbance, transducers, protection of the cables, and the electromagnetic coupling between transducers and cables. The cross-talking between cables is removed by grouping and extra grounding of the cables. The shear wave velocity of the FVP is simply calculated by using the travel distance and the first arrival time. The large calibration chamber tests are carried out to investigate the disturbance effect due to the penetration of FVP blade and the validity of the shear waves measured by the FVP. The blade type FVP is tested in soils up to 30m in depth. The shear wave velocity is measured every 10cm. This study suggests that the upgraded blade type FVP may be an effective device for measuring the shear wave velocity with minimized soil disturbance in the field.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.863-870
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• 2017

With the increasing interest in using bacterial biofilms in geo-engineering practices, such as soil improvement, sealing leakage in earth structures, and hydraulic barrier installation, understanding of the contribution of bacterial biofilm formation to mechanical and hydraulic behavior of soils is important. While mechanical properties of soft gel-like biofilms need to be identified for appropriate modeling and prediction of behaviors of biofilm-associated soils, elastic properties of biofilms remain poorly understood. Therefore, this study investigated the microscale Young's modulus of biofilms produced by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 in a liquid phase. The indentation test was performed on a biofilm sample using the atomic force microscopy (AFM) with a spherical indentor, and the force-indentation responses were obtained during approach and retraction traces. Young's modulus of biofilms was estimated to be ~33-38 kPa from these force-indentation curves and Hertzian contact theory. It appears that the AFM indentation result captures the microscale local characteristics of biofilms and its stiffness is relatively large compared to the other methods, including rheometer and hydrodynamic shear tests, which reflect the average macro-scale behaviors. While modeling of mechanical behaviors of biofilm-associated soils requires the properties of each component, the obtained results provide information on the mechanical properties of biofilms that can be considered as cementing, gluing, or filling materials in soils.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.1
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• pp.113-120
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• 2023

Coastal and offshore structures such as ports and offshore wind farms will often need to be built on fine-grained sediments. Geotechnical properties associated with sediment compressibility are key parameters for marine construction designs especially on soft grounds, which involve clay-mineral dominated fines that can consolidate and settle significantly in response to engineered and environmental loads. We conduct liquid limit tests and 1D consolidation tests with fine-grained soils (silica silt, mica, kaolin and bentonite) and biogenic soils (diatom). The pore fluids for the liquid limit tests include deionized water and a series of brines with NaCl salt concentrations of 0.001 m, 0.01 m, 0.1 m, 0.6 m and 2.0 m, and the pore fluids for the consolidation tests deionized water, 0.01 m, 0.6 m, 2 m. The salt concentrations help the liquid limits of kaolin and bentonite decrease, but those of diatom slightly increase. The silica silt and mica show minimal changes in liquid limit due to salt concentrations. Accordingly, compression indices of soils follow the trend of the liquid limit as the liquid limit determined the initial void ratio of the consolidation test. Diatoms are more likely to be broken than clastic sediments during to loading, and diatom-rich sediment is therefore generally more compressible than clastic-rich sediment.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.5
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• pp.453-462
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• 2023

Intermediate Geomaterials (IGMs) are natural formation materials that exhibit the engineering behavior (strength and compressibility) between soils and rocks. The engineering behavior of such material is highly unpredictable as the IGMs are stiffer than soils and weaker/softer than rocks. Further, the characterization of such material needs exposure to both soil and rock mechanics. In most conventional designs of geotechnical structures, the engineering properties of the IGMs are either aligned with soils or rocks, and this assumption may end up either in an over-conservative design or under-conservative design. Hence, many researchers have attempted to evaluate its actual engineering properties through laboratory tests. However, the test results are partially reliable due to the poor core recovery of IGMs and the possible sample disturbance. Subsequently, in-situ tests have been used in recent years to evaluate the engineering properties of IGMs. However, the respective in-situ test finds its limitations while exploring IGMs with different geological formations at deeper depths with the constraints of sampling. Standard Penetration Test (SPT) is the strength-based index test that is often used to explore IGMs. Moreover, it was also observed that the coefficient of variation of the design parameters (which represents the uncertainties in the design parameters) of IGMs is relatively high, and also the studies on the probabilistic characterization of IGMs are limited compared with soils and rocks. With this perspective, the present article reviews the laboratory and in-situ tests used to characterize the IGMs and explores the shear strength variation based on their geological origin.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.301-312
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• 2003

This paper considers the stresses and pore pressures induced in soft ground due to tunnelling and it presents and discusses the approach methods for estimating the stability of the tunnel and its heading during drained and undrained condition. In practical, the undrained analyses of the face stability of shield tunnelling in soft soil, are carried out based on the field data measured during tunnelling and the results are also evaluated.

• Journal of Industrial Technology
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• v.31 no.B
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• pp.91-98
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• 2011

In this thesis, from the results of settlement measurement performed at the site where embankment earthwork was carried out on the ground consisting of highly plastic and silty soft soils interlayered with organic deposits, various methods of predicting the embankment settlement such as Hoshino's method, Asaoka's method, hyperbolic method, ${\sqrt{s}}$ method and Monden's method were used to investigate their applicability and the inverse method of finding the soil parameter related to consolidation was used to predict the consolidation behavior in the future. It was confirmed that reliable prediction of consolidation behavior under various conditions could be done to estimate soil parameter related to consolidation such as the consolidation index and consolidation coefficient by the inverse method of comparing the measured settlement with the predicted value by the settlement prediction methods.

• 한국지구물리탐사학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2003.11a
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• pp.42-51
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• 2003

The global demand for underground facilities has increased substantially in the past decades, and a substantial number of underground projects have had to deal with challenging ground conditions in urban environments. Particularly challenging are weak and unstable water bearing soils. Advancements in shielded TBM tech-nology have led to significant improvements regarding the ability to control ground deformations in soft ground. Nonetheless, ground collapse may occur even when the most advanced TBM designs are employed if unexpected adverse ground conditions are encountered or if insufficient stabilizing pressure is transferred to the tunnel face. This paper reviews common approaches for face stability and face pressure transmission calculations, and provides an overview of some of the latest technological developments and considerations for soft ground TBM applica-tions.

• Proceedings of the KSR Conference
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• 2009.05a
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• pp.1519-1524
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• 2009

Construction of high-speed concrete track embankments over soft ground needs many of the ground improvement techniques. Drains, surcharge loading, and geosynthetic reinforcement, have all been used to solve the settlement and embankment stability issues associated with construction on soft soils. However, when time constraints are critical to the success of the project, another measures should be considered. Especially, since the design criteria of residual settlement is limited as 30mm for concrete track embankment, it is very difficult to satisfy this allowable settlement by using the former construction method. Pile net method consist of vertical columns that are designed to transfer the load of the embankment through the soft compressible soil layer to a firm foundation and one or more layers of geosynthetic reinforcement placed between the top of the columns and the bottom of the embankment. In this paper, three cases with different embankment height and number of geosynthetic reinforcement, were studied through FEM analysis for efficient use of pile net method.

• Magazine of the Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.36 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 1994

To investigate the behaviour of the embankment on very soft foundation reinforced geotex- files,the laboratory model test in order to analyze the elementary effects of geotextile reinfor- cement and the finite element program analyzing the stresses and deformations characteristics was carried out. A two-dimensional nonlinear finite element program called GEOTEXT(a modification of ISBILD) for the static analysis of embankment on very soft foundation reinforced geotextiles has been developed. Both linear and nonlinear hyperbolic stress-strain soil models are inclu- ded, and incremental and stage construction can be simulated. However, the program GEO- TEXT is not developed herein as an adaptable design tool for practicing engineer. It was found that the geotextile reinforcement significantly reduced the shear stresses in the foundation and decreased the vertical differential settlements at the top of the embank- ment. This influence was more pronounced as the tensile strength of the geotextile was increased.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.41 no.3
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• pp.365-378
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• 2012

In this study, strength reduction factors are investigated for SDOF systems with period range of 0.1-3.0 s with elastoplastic behavior considering soil structure interaction for 64 different earthquake motions recorded on different site conditions such as rock, stiff soil, soft soil and very soft soil. Soil structure interacting systems are modeled and analyzed with effective period, effective damping and effective ductility values differing from fixed-base case. For inelastic time history analyses, Newmark method for step by step time integration was adapted in an in-house computer program. Results are compared with those calculated for fixed-base case. A new equation is proposed for strength reduction factor of interacting system as a function of structural period of system (T), ductility ratio (${\mu}$) and period lengthening ratio (T/T). It is concluded that soil structure interaction reduces the strength reduction factors for soft soils, therefore, using the fixed-base strength reduction factors for interacting systems lead to non-conservative design forces.