• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.11-20
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• 2018

Surplus soil is commonly used at construction sites, because suitable fill material is not always immediately available and leads to additional costs. However, most surplus soils do not meet the requirement of suitable fill material to achieve the stability and strength of embankments. In this study, Proctor compaction tests and field compaction tests were performed by installing geosynthetics to resolve the problems caused by compacting unsuitable soils. Compaction energy and the number of geosynthetics were changed under the type A- and D- and type A Proctor compaction tests (KS F 2312), respectively. The field compaction testing using geosynthetics was performed on surplus soils of high water content. Optimum water content and maximum dry density of compacted soil decreased and increased by reinforcing geosynthetics, respectively. Compaction curves behaved with geosynthetics as the compaction curves behaved with higher compaction energy. Efficient compaction was possible because the compaction energy increased to 2.10 and 2.71 times the compaction energy required to achieve the same maximum dry density with one and two geosynthetic layer(s), respectively. Furthermore, field compaction tests verified that efficient compaction was possible because the dry density of unsuitable surplus soils of high water content was increased by reinforcing geosynthetics.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.51-63
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• 2005

Concrete pavement may suffer from material deterioration or structural problems, which lead to surface cracks and deflection of a concrete pavement. Degraded concrete pavement, when it is still under operation, should be recovered by an urgent maintenance to avoid the discontinued service leading to the significant traffic problems and economic loss. Seismic techniques are good tools to assess the structural integrity of concrete runway. It is because seismic techniques can evaluate engineering properties nondestructively and quickly and the evaluation can be extended to subgrade. In this study, a series of numerical simulations of stress-wave propagation were performed to verify feasibility of seismic techniques as an assessment tool. Based on the results of the numerical simulation, a framework of using seismic techniques was presented fur the nondestructive integrated assessment fur structural integrity of concrete runway. And the presented framework was applied to $\bigcirc\bigcirc$ concrete runway with surface cracks, which required urgent maintenance, to identify the causes of the surface cracks. The results obtained from the structural integrity assessment were compared with the measurements of the cores collected from the same runway for verification of the presented framework.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.261-271
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• 2003

A condition evaluation procedure for the pavement foundations using multi-load level Falling Weight Deflectometer(FWD) deflections is presented in this paper. A dynamic finite element program incorporating a stress-dependent material model, was used to generate the synthetic deflection database. Based on this synthetic database, the relationships between surface deflections and critical responses, such as stresses and strains in base and subgrade layers, have been established. FWD deflection data, Dynamic Cone Penetrometer(UP) data, and repeated load resilient modulus testing results used in developing this procedure were collected from the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) database. Research effort focused on investigation of the effect of the FWD load level on the condition evaluation procedures. The results indicate that the proposed procedure can estimate the pavement foundation conditions. It is also found that structurally adjusted Base Damage Index (BDI) and Base Curvature Index (BCI) are good indicators for the prediction of stiffness characteristics of aggregate base and subgrade respectively. A FWD test with a load of 66.7 kN or less does not improve the accuracy of this procedure. Results from the study for the nonlinear behavior of a pavement foundations indicate that the deflection ratio obtained from multi-load level deflections can predict the type and quality of the pavement foundation materials.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.31 no.8
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• pp.17-28
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• 2015

The purpose of this study is to measure the volumetric water content of unsaturated soils during drying and wetting process by using volumetric pressure plate extractor (VPPE) incorporated with time domain reflectometry (TDR). The VPPE consists of a pressure cell, a pressure regulator, a burette system and a TDR probe. Two samples with different initial void ratios were prepared in the pressure cell, and the air pressure at the range of 0.1 kPa - 50 kPa was applied to adjust the matric suction by the pressure regulator. The burette system was used to measure the volumetric water content change of the sample according to the matric suction. In addition, the TDR probe, installed in the cell, was used to evaluate the dielectric constant from the reflected signal of the electromagnetic wave at the probe. The volumetric water content of specimen was estimated by the empirical equation between the volumetric water content and dielectric constant, which was calibrated with the Jumunjin sand. The test results show that the volumetric water content calculated by TDR probe is strongly correlated to the measured value by burette system. The hysteresis occurs during drying and wetting process. Furthermore, the degree of hysteresis reduces in the repeated process. This study suggests that TDR may be effectively used to evaluate the water content soil for the determination of water characteristic curve of unsaturated soils.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.3
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• pp.85-94
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• 2011

Mixtures of sand and rubber particles ($D_{sand}/D_{rubber}=1$) are investigated to explore their characteristics under different stain level. Mixtures are prepared with different volumetric sand fractions ($sf=V_{sand}/V_{total}$). Experimental data are gathered from a resonant column, an instrumented oedometer, and a direct shear tests. Results show that sand and rubber differently control the behavior of the whole mixture with strain level. Non-linear degradation of small strain stiffness is observed for the mixtures with $sf{\geq}0.4$, while the mixtures with low sand fraction ($sf{\leq}0.2$) show significantly high elastic threshold strain. Vertical stress-deformation increases dramatically when the rubber particle works as a member of force chain. The strength of the mixtures increases as the content of rubber particle decreases, and contractive behavior is observed in the mixtures with $sf{\leq}0.8$. Rubber particle plays different roles with strain level in the mixture: it increases a coordination number and controls a plasticity of the mixture in small strain; it prevents a buckling of force chain in intermediate strain; it leads a contractive behavior in large strain.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.15 no.9
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• pp.5-12
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• 2014

Anaerobic digestion was investigated for the stabilization of sludge, decrease of volatile solids, production of biogas for wastewater sludge. In this study, total solids and volatile solids, elemental analysis were conducted to determine characteristics of various types of sludges and investigate the feasibility of biogas production of Municipal Wastewater Sludge (MWS), Industrial Wastewater Sludge (IWS), mixed sludge (Mix), and Municipal Wastewater Sludg Cake (MWSC). Total solids, volatile solids, and C/N ratio were determined in the range of 11.2~20.6 %, 62.1~83.1 % of TS and 4.96~8.33 %. Using the biochemical methane potential (BMP test), mixed sludge and wastewater sludge finished the methane production within approximately 20 day and 16~17 day. Sludge cake finished within 10 day. Mixed sludge produced 395.5 mL $CH_4$ per g of Volatile Solid (VS) and resulted in the highest methane production. For carbon dioxide production, five sludges had similar value of accumulated carbon dioxide production except for sludge cake.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.22 no.3
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• pp.281-291
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• 2010

In this study, a five-story steel frame was designed in accordance with KBC2005 to evaluate the effects of the beam-column connection on the structural behavior. The connections were designed as fully rigid and semi-rigid. The fiber model was used to describe the moment-curvature relationship of the steel beam and the column, the power model for the moment-rotation angle of the semi-rigid connection and the three-parameter model for the hysteretic behavior of the steel beam, column, and connection. The structure was idealized as separate 2-D frames and as connected 2-D frames. The peak ground accelerations of four earthquake records were modified in a time-history analysis for the levels of the mean return period and for the maximum base-shear force in a pushover analysis. The top story displacement, base-shear force, story drift, demanded ductility ratio for the semi-rigid connection, maximum bending moment of the column, beam, and connection, and distribution of the plastic hinge were examined in the time-history analysis. The frame with the semi-rigid connection yielded a lower base-shear force, less magnitude, and increasing ratio in the bending moment of the column, beam, and connection than the frame with a fully rigid connection. The TSD connection was deemed to have secured the economy and safety of the sample structure that was subjected to seismic excitation for the Korean design level.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.27 no.12
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• pp.5-15
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• 2011

Conventional designs of landfill covers use geosynthetics such as geomembrane and GCL, and clay liners to lower the permeability of final covers of landfill sites. However, differential settlement and the variation of temperature or humidity in landfill sites cause the development of cracks or structural damage inside the final cover. This study examined the application of a Self Recovering Sustainable Liner (SRSL) as an alternative landfill final cover material. SRSL consists of double layers, which have chemicals, can generate precipitates filling the pores of the layers by chemical reaction. The interface material forms an impermeable layer and in case of internal cracks, the reactants of the two layers migrate towards the crack and heal it by forming another liner. In this study the applicability of SRSL material for landfill final cover was examined by performing flexible wall permeameter tests to prove that the hydraulic conductivity is lower than the regulations and unconfined compression tests to judge whether the strength satisfies the restriction for the landfill final cover. Furthermore, the environmental impacts on the permeability and strength were evaluated. The experimental results show that the SRSL has lower hydraulic conductivity and higher strength than the regulations and is little influenced by climatic changes such as wet/dry or freeze/thaw process.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.11
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• pp.43-50
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• 2016

A reinforcement is required to ensure the structural safety in case of railway embankment excavation under railway load. A large diameter soil nailing with concrete wall is applied as the reinforcement method instead of the conventional soil nailing system. In this study, a series of 3 dimensional numerical analyses are performed to investigate the optimum reinforcement considering 15 different conditions based on the length, lateral spacing, diameter, and inclination of the reinforcement. The interface between soil nail and perimetric grout is considered by means of cohesion, stiffness and perimeter of the grout. 0.3 m of reinforcement diameter is assessed as the most appropriate based on the economical viewpoint though ground displacement decreases with the increase of diameter, however the difference of displacement is negligible between 0.4 m and 0.3 m of diameter. Surface settlement, lateral displacement of wall, and stress of reinforcement are calculated and economic viewpoint to reinforce embankment considered. Consequently, the optimum reinforcement conditions considering those factors are evaluated as 3 m in length, 0.3 m in diameter, 1.5 m in lateral spacing, and 10 degree of inclination angle in the case of 3 m of excavation depth. Additionally, inclined potential failure surface occurs with approximately 60 degrees from the end of nails and the surface settlement and wall lateral displacement are restrained successfully by the large diameter soil nailing, based on the result of shear strain rate.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.4
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• pp.225-238
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• 2018

In this paper, to investigate the influence of installation damage, a variety of full-scale field installation tests with 15 geosynthetics reinforcements and fill materials of various grain size distribution have been performed. The full-scale field installation test was conducted with reference to the FHWA (2009) guidelines. The tensile strength tests were performed by sampling up to 20 specimens randomly from the excavated geosynthetics reinforcements after compaction of fill material, and the degree of decrease in tensile strength of reinforcements due to compaction was analyzed based on the experiment results. It was found that the degree of tensile strength reduction of geosynthetics reinforcements due to the compaction of fill material is greatly influenced by the type of reinforcement and the maximum diameter of fill material. In addition, it was found that the strength reduction ratio of PET geogrid (PVC coating) with relatively small stiffness was greatest, and that the larger the maximum grain size of the fill material, the greater the strength reduction ratio. And also, a more reasonable evaluation method for the installation damage reduction factor of geosynthetics reinforcements is proposed based on the results of full-scale field installation tests in present study and the existing test results.