• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.34 no.3
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• pp.329-339
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• 2023

The objective of this study is to develop a Stability Evaluation System for retaining walls to assess their safety in real-time during excavation. A ground investigation is typically conducted before construction to gather information about the soil properties and predict wall stability. However, these properties may not accurately reflect the actual ground being excavated. To address this issue, the study employed a differential evolution algorithm to estimate the soil parameters of the actual ground. The estimated results were then used as input for an artificial neural network to evaluate the stability of the retaining walls. The study achieved an average accuracy of over 90% in predicting differential settlement, wall displacement, anchor force, and structural stability of the retaining walls. If implemented at actual excavation sites, this approach would enable real-time prediction of wall stability and facilitate effective safety management. Overall, the developed Stability Evaluation System offers a promising solution for ensuring the stability of retaining walls during construction. By incorporating real-time soil parameter analysis, it enhances the accuracy of stability predictions and contributes to proactive safety management in excavation projects.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.36 no.3
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• pp.277-293
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• 2024

Shored Mechanically Stabilized Earth (SMSE) walls are types of soil retaining structures that increase soil stability under static and dynamic loads. The damage caused by an earthquake can be determined by evaluating the probabilistic seismic response of SMSE walls. This study aimed to assess the seismic performance of SMSE walls and provide fragility curves for evaluating failure levels. The generated fragility curves can help to improve the seismic performance of these walls through assessing and controlling variables like backfill surface settlement, lateral deformation of facing, and permanent relocation of the wall. A parametric study was performed based on a non-linear elastoplastic constitutive model known as the hardening soil model with small-strain stiffness, HSsmall. The analyses were conducted using PLAXIS 2D, a Finite Element Method (FEM) program, under plane-strain conditions to study the effect of the number of geogrid layers and the axial stiffness of geogrids on the performance of SMSE walls. In this study, three areas of damage (minor, moderate, and severe) were observed and, in all cases, the wall has not completely entered the stage of destruction. For the base model (Model A), at the highest ground acceleration coefficient (1 g), in the moderate damage state, the fragility probability was 76%. These values were 62%, and 54%, respectively, by increasing the number of geogrids (Model B) and increasing the geogrid stiffness (Model C). Meanwhile, the fragility values were 99%, 98%, and 97%, respectively in the case of minor damage. Notably, the probability of complete destruction was zero percent in all models.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.17-25
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• 2010

Evaluation of stability in traditional designing of reinforced soil structures is executed by examination of internal and external stability. Analysis of internal stability is for pull-out and ductile strength. Analysis of external stability is for settlement, overturning and sliding. To minimize inherent uncertainties of soil properties and analytical model, reliability analysis was developed recently. In this study, reliability analysis method considering simultaneous failure probability for various failure mode of internal and external stability is proposed. By applying uni-modal bounds, Stability of system reliability of reinforced soil structures is evaluated by integrating multi failure mode for various analytical model. Because of complex consideration for various failure shapes and modes, it is possible to secure advanced safety by using simultaneous failure probability. And evaluation of reinforced soil structure is executed by representative index, simultaneous failure probability, than previous method.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2004.03b
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• pp.714-721
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• 2004

The purpose of this study is to find out the similitude laws for dissipation velocity of excess pore pressure after liquefaction according to magnitude of input accelerations and height of model soils from the results of impulse load tests. In impulse load tests, model soils were constructed to the height of 25cm, 50cm, and 100cm in acrylic tubes whose inside diameters were 19cm and 38cm respectively, and impulse loads were applied at the bottom of each model soil to liquefy the entire model soil. Excess pore pressure distribution by depth and settlement of soil surface were measured in each test. Dissipation curves of excess pore pressure measured in each tests were simulated by solidification theory, and dissipation velocities of excess pore pressure were determined from the slope of simulated dissipation curves. From the results of impulse load tests, dissipation velocity of excess pore pressure was not affected by magnitude of input acceleration, and from this fact, dissipation process was proved to be different from dynamic phenomenon. However, dissipation velocity of excess pore pressure increased as height of model soil increased and showed little difference as diameter of model soil increased. Therefore, the similitude law for dissipation velocity could be expressed by the similitude law for model height to 0.2 without regard to the diameter of model soil.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.339-348
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• 2020

The uncertain geotechnical properties of frozen soil are important evidence for the design, operation and maintenance of the frozen ground. The complex geological, environmental and physical effects can lead to the spatial variations of the frozen soil, and the uncertain mechanical properties are the key factors for the uncertain analysis of frozen soil engineering. In this study, the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio of warm frozen soil were measured, and the statistical characteristics under different temperature conditions are obtained. The autocorrelation distance (ACD) and autocorrelation function (ACF) of uncertain mechanical properties are estimated by random field (RF) method. The results show that the mean elastic modulus and mean strength decrease with the increase of temperature while the mean Poisson ratio increases with the increase of temperature. The average values of the ACD for the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio are 0.64m, 0.53m and 0.48m, respectively. The standard deviation of the ACD for the elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio are 0.03m, 0.07m and 0.03m, respectively. The ACFs of elastic modulus, strength and Poisson ratio decrease with the increase of ratio of local average distance and scale of fluctuation. The ACF of uncertain mechanical properties is different when the temperature is different. This study can improve our understanding of the spatial autocorrelation variations of uncertain geotechnical properties and provide a basis and reference for the uncertain settlement analysis of frozen soil foundation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Hazard Mitigation
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• v.7 no.2 s.25
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• pp.35-44
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• 2007

Plowable fill is generally a mixture of sand, fly ash, a small amount of cement and water. Sand is the major component of most flowable fill mixes. Marine dredged soil was adopted for flowable fill instead of fly ash. Natural sea sand and in-situ soil were used for comparison. The flow behavior, hardening characteristics, and ultimate strength behavior of flowable fill were investigated. The unconfined compression test necessary to sustain walkability as the fresh flowble fill hardens was determined and the strength at 3-days appeared to correlate well with the water-to-cement ratio. The strength parameters, like cohesion and internal friction angle, was determined along the curing time. The creep test for settlement potential was conducted. Also, potable falling weight deflectometer(PFWD) test has been carried out for elastic modulus of each controlled low strength materials(CLSM). The data presented show that marine dredged soil and in-situ soil can be successfully used in CLSM.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.21-30
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• 2012

This paper analyzes the map of soil contamination in years of 2009 by actual survey in Incheon. South-east national industrial complex and the US Army base in Bu-Pyung are turned out to be high polluted area because spilling of oil storage facilities, vehicle and glass industries. So, the soil contamination in Incheon Metropolitan area will be getting more attention. To solve this problem, the soil contamination has been predicted by using the visual Sufer and visual Modflow which are analysis program in geotechnique and water flow. The result of analysis is that F and TPH will be retarded after 5 years. However, the contamination diffusion will be increased if there is no proper management of soil contamination.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.345-354
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• 2018

Currently, layered geogrid method (LGM) is the commonly practiced technique for reinforcement of slopes. In this paper the geogrid-box method (GBM) is introduced as a new approach for reinforcement of rock-soil slopes. To achieve the objectives of this study, a laboratory setup was designed and the slopes without reinforcements and reinforced with LGM and GBM were tested under the loading of a circular footing. The effect of vertical spacing between geogrid layers and box thickness on normalized bearing capacity and failure mechanism of slopes was investigated. A series of 3D finite element analysis were also performed using ABAQUS software to supplement the results of the model tests. The results indicated that the load-settlement behavior and the ultimate bearing capacity of footing can be significantly improved by the inclusion of reinforcing geogrid in the soil. It was found that for the slopes reinforced with GBM, the displacement contours are widely distributed in the rock-soil mass underneath the footing in greater width and depth than that in the reinforced slope with LGM, which in turn results in higher bearing capacity. It was also established that by reducing the thickness of geogrid-boxes, the distribution and depth of displacement contours increases and a longer failure surface is developed, which suggests the enhanced bearing capacity of the slope. Based on the studied designs, the ultimate bearing capacity of the GBM-reinforced slope was found to be 11.16% higher than that of the slope reinforced with LGM. The results also indicated that, reinforcement of rock-soil slopes using GBM causes an improvement in the ultimate bearing capacity as high as 24.8 times more than that of the unreinforced slope.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.10
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• pp.27-40
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• 2021

The construction method to prevent the frost heave or thaw settlement is called the ground stabilization method, and the thermo-syphon is one of the typical ground stabilization methods. The thermo-syphon has recently been developed with a simple analysis model and thermal analysis has been carried out, but the frost heave of frost susceptible soil was not considered. This study was conducted using ABAQUS internal user subroutine to develop the numerical analysis model (Coupled thermo-mechanical) that can simultaneously perform thermal analysis for the temperature change of the soil according to the thermo-syphon and structural analysis to predict the frost heave of the soil accordingly. As a result of the numerical analysis, the frost heave of the soil decreased as the performance of the thermo-syphon increased. As for the main results, when the thermo-syphon which has contain 25%, 50%, and 100% of refrigerant filling ratio was applied, the reduction ratio of the frost heave was 5.5%, 14.4%, and 21% respectively.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.699-715
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• 2019

Recently, in urban areas, cavities and ground collapse adjacent to underground structures are frequently reported. Several studies on the cavity generation by structure cracks have been made, however they are focused on the cause of cracks and settlement of the ground. In this paper, soil particle and groundwater discharge through pipe cracks and cavity generation mechanism are investigated. The theoretical analysis of the groundwater, which is the main factor of the drainage of the soil particles, and the particle transport mechanism and flow characteristics were investigated. An experimental model test was carried out to identify the mechanism of cavity generation by underground buried pipe cracks. The soil particle weight of discharge through the cracks, and the movement characteristics of the particles were analyzed using PIV. In this study, it is clearly identified that soil particle movements, cavity generation and ground collapse that occur in the ground are basically caused by the movement of groundwater.