• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.13-22
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• 2021

Pile or column supported embankments have been increasingly employed to construct highway or railway embankments over soft soils. Piles or columns of stiffer material installed in the soft ground can provide the necessary support by transferring the embankment load to a firm stratum using a soil arching. However, there has been reported to occur a relatively large differential settlement between the piles and the untreated soils. Geosynthetic reinforced pile or column supported embankment (GRPS) is often used to minimize the differential settlement. Two dimensional finite element anlyses have been performed on both the column supported embankments and the geogrid reinforced column supported embankments by using a PLAXIS 2D to evaluate the soil arching effect. Based on the results obtained from finite element analyses, the stress reduction ratio decreases as the area replacement ratio increases in the column supported embankments. For the geogrid reinforced column supported embankments, the geogrid reinforcemnt can reduce differential settlements effectively. In additon, the use of stiffer geogrid is appeared to be more effective in reducing the differential settlements.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.91 no.3
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• pp.315-324
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• 2024

An expansive soil in 4970 special railway line in Dangyang City, China, has encountered a series of landslides due to the expansion characteristics of expansive soil over the past 50 years. Thereafter, a sheet-pile retaining structure was adopted to fortify the expansive soil slope after a comprehensive discussion. In order to evaluate the efficacy of engineering measure of sheet-pile retaining structure, the field test was carried out to investigate the lateral pressure and pile bending moment subjected to construction and service conditions, and the local daily rainfall was also recorded. It took more than 500 days to carry out the field investigation, and the general change laws of lateral pressure and pile bending moment versus local daily rainfall were obtained. The results show that the effect of rainfall on the moisture content of backfill behind the wall decreases with depth. The performance of sheet-pile retaining structure is sensitive to the intensity of rainfall. The arching effect is reduced significantly by employing a series of sheet behind piles. The lateral pressure behind the sheet exhibits a single-peak distribution. The turning point of the horizontal swelling pressure distribution is correlated with the self-weight pressure distribution of soil and the variation of soil moisture content. The measured pile bending moment is approximately 44% of the ultimate pile capacity, which indicates that the sheet-pile retaining structure is in a stable service condition with enough safety reserve.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.5-16
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• 2016

In the geosynthetics-reinforced piled embankment the effects of soft soil stiffness, friction angle of the fill material, tensile stiffness of geosynthetics, and height of the embankment on the load transfer soil arch measured by the critical height were numerically investigated. Results from parametric studies show that the magnitude of the soft soil stiffness is the most influencing factor on the critical height. The contour charts of the critical height with respect to the combination of the soft soil stiffness and other parameters were presented. The charts show that the critical height sensitively varies with the combination of the soft soil stiffness and the height of embankment. Under the sufficiently low stiffness of soft soil, the critical height sensitively varies with the friction angle of the fill material. Once the geosynthetic layer is placed, however, the magnitude of the tensile stiffness of the geosynthetic layer hardly influences the critical height of the soil arch.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.5
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• pp.157-170
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• 1999

A new design technique is presented to stabilize cut slopes in cohesive soils by use of piles. The design method can consider systematically factors such as the gradient and height of slope, the number and position of pile's rows, the interval and stiffness of piles, etc. The design method is established on the basis of the stability analysis of slope with rows of piles. The basic concept applied in the stability analysis is that the soil across the open space between piles can be retained by the arching action of the soil, when a row of piles is installed in soil undergoing lateral movement such as landslides. To obtain the whole stability of slope containing piles, two kinds of analyses for the pile-stability and the slope- stability must be performed simultaneously. An instrumentation system has been installed at a cut slope in cohesive soil, which has been designed according to the presented design process. The behavior of both the piles and the soil across the open space between piles is observed precisely. The result of instrumentation shows that the cut slope has been stabilized by the contribution of stabilizing effect of piles on the slope stability in cohesive soil.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.61 no.2
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• pp.245-253
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• 2017

The increasing lack of good quality soils allowing the development of roadway, motorway, or railway networks, as well as large scale industrial facilities, necessitates the use of reinforcement techniques. Their aim is the improvement of the global performance of compressible soils, both in terms of settlement reduction and increase of the load bearing capacity. Among the various available techniques, the improvement of soils by incorporating vertical stiff piles appears to be a particularly appropriate solution, since it is easy to implement and does not require any substitution of significant soft soil volumes. The technique consists in driving a group of regularly spaced piles through a soft soil layer down to an underlying competent substratum. The surface load being thus transferred to this substratum by means of those reinforcing piles, which illustrates the case of a piled embankment. The differential settlements at the base of the embankment between the soft soil and the stiff piles lead to an "arching effect" in the embankment due to shearing mechanisms. This effect, which can be accentuated by the use of large pile caps, allows partial load transfer onto the pile, as well as surface settlement reduction, thus ensuring that the surface structure works properly. A technique for producing rigid piles has been developed to achieve in a single operation a rigid circular pile associated with a cone shaped head reversed on the place of a rigid circular pile. This technique has been used with success in a pile-supported road near Bourgoin-Jallieu (France). In this article, a numerical study based on this real case is proposed to highlight the functioning mode of this new technique in the case of industrial slabs.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.4 no.2
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• pp.11-18
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• 2005

A pilot scale filed model test and 2-D numerical analysis was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of constructing a geogrid-reinforced and pile-supported embankment system over soft ground to reduce differential settlement, and the results are presented hearin. Three-by-three pile groups with varying the space between pile were driven into a layer of soft marine clay and a layer of geogrid was used as reinforcement over each pile group. 2-D numerical analysis has been conducted by using the FLAC-2D(Fast Lagrangian Analysis of Continua) program for same condition of field model test. The settlement, vertical stress, and strain of geogrid due to the construction of embankment were measured at various locations. Based on the field model test and numerical analysis results, pile reinforcement generated the soil arching at the midspan of pile cap and the geogrid reinforcement helps reduce the differential settlement of the soft ground by tensile strength of geogrid. Also for $D/b{\geq}6.0$, the effectiveness of geogrid reinforcement in reducing settlement is negligible.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.12 no.11
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• pp.23-30
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• 2011

In this study, Terzaghi's formula was modified to solve problems considering the dilatancy effect of the soil for estimating the earth pressure acting on tunnel. It is performed for the comparison with Terzaghi's formula and modified Terzaghi's formula, tunnel model test result of Kobe University Rock Mechanics Laboratory. From comparison results of the earth pressure acting on tunnel, the earth pressure calculated by the Terzaghi's formula was estimated largest value. The earth pressure measured through the tunnel model test was least value. The difference between the earth pressure derived from Terzaghi's original formula and that derived from the modified formula was caused by the dilation effect, which was caused by the soil volume change. The difference between the earth pressure derived from the modified formula and the earth pressure measured through the tunnel model test, earth pressure results from the energy making failure surface. The results of FEM analysis were almost consistent with the results of mathematical analysis.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.10 no.1
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• pp.41-48
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• 2008

This paper deals with the characteristics of earth pressure to the debris-fall prevention walls which usually are installed in front of steep slope. Such walls have narrow backfill width where the active soil wedge can not be developed fully. The earth pressure to such walls ue affected by the movement of wall and arching effects due to the friction developing on the surface of adjacent ground slope and wall and therefore cannot be analyzed and calculated reliably. The study is carried out through laboratory model tests using centrifuge test. Test results reveal that the earth pressure to the debris-fall prevention wall depends largely on the inclination angle of the ground slope and the wall movement. The earth pressure reduction due to wall movement was observed at the upper half of wall, while the arching effect was significant at the lower half especially in the case of steep ground slope. It can be said that from the result of this study in the design of a debris-fall prevention wall the earth pressure should be determined considering the inclination of ground slope and the condition of wall movement during and after construction.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.2 no.2
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• pp.3-11
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• 2003

Researches on the induced trench method using compressible materials such as clay, mud, straw, or EPS block have been performed to reduce the load acting on buried conduits under a high fill. The induced trench method has the problems that the arching area due to the compressible arching material is one dimensional or localized in a narrow zone. The main purpose of this study is to solve the problems of the induced trench method mentioned above. The various types of laboratory model tests are conducted to find the effects of the variations of EPS block width, multilayer application, soil density, and diameter of the flexible steel pipe. A series of model tests was conducted to evaluate the reduction of earth pressure on conduits using EPS block. Based on modeling test it is found that the magnitude of vertical earth pressure on conduits was reduced about 60% compared with conventional flexible conduit systems.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.11
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• pp.69-79
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• 2012

This pre-supported nail method is able to decrease ground displacements more than NATM because this method reinforces ground with grouted steels before tunnel excavation. Therefore this method has advantage of being able to increase the stability and workability. This study presents applicability of pre-supported nail method with case of site measurement for shallow tunnel composed with high groundwater level and unconsolidated soil, performs this research the mechanism of new supporting system is compared with the conventional existing supporting system in terms of soil reinforcement. NATM has characteristics that construction stage displacement of the apparent height difference is observed in the step of divided excavation processing. Otherwise it is analyzed that pre-supported nail method is not sensitive in the displacement problem of excavation processing in comparison to NATM. It is found that this method is very applicable in shallow depth tunnel such as portal area, tunnel in soil and weak zone without arching effect.