• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.6 no.6
• /
• pp.561-575
• /
• 2014

Estimating seismic displacements has a great importance for foundations on or adjacent to slope surfaces. However, dynamic solution of the problem has received little attention by previous researchers. This paper presents a new analytical model to determine seismic displacements of the shallow foundations adjacent to slopes. For this purpose, a dynamic equilibrium equation is written for the foundation with failure wedge. Stiffness and damping at the sliding surface are considered variable and a simple method is proposed for its estimation. Finally, for different failure surfaces, the calculated dynamic displacement and the surfaces with maximum strain are selected as the critical failure surface. Analysis results are presented as curves for different slope angles and different foundation distances from edge of the slope and are then compared with the experimental studies and software results. The comparison shows that the proposed model is capable of estimating seismic displacement of the shallow foundations adjacent to slopes. Also, the results demonstrate that, with increased slope angle and decreased foundation distances from the slope edge, seismic displacement increases in a non-linear trend. With increasing the slope angle and failure wedge angle, maximum strain of failure wedge increases. In addition, effect of slope on foundation settlement could be neglected for the foundation distances over 3B to 5B.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.13 no.6
• /
• pp.977-995
• /
• 2017

It is well accepted that rock failure mechanism influence the cutting efficiency and determination of optimum cutting parameters. In this paper, an attempt was made to research the factors that affect the failure mechanism based on discrete element method (DEM). The influences of cutting depth, hydrostatic pressure, cutting velocity, back rake angle and joint set on failure mechanism in rock-cutting are researched by PFC2D. The results show that: the ductile failure occurs at shallow cutting depths, the brittle failure occurs as the depth of cut increases beyond a threshold value. The mean cutting forces have a linear related to the cutting depth if the cutting action is dominated by the ductile mode, however, the mean cutting forces are deviate from the linear relationship while the cutting action is dominated by the brittle mode. The failure mechanism changes from brittle mode with larger chips under atmospheric conditions, to ductile mode with crushed chips under hydrostatic conditions. As the cutting velocity increases, a grow number of micro-cracks are initiated around the cutter and the volume of the chipped fragmentation is decreasing correspondingly. The crack initiates and propagates parallel to the free surface with a smaller rake angle, but with the rake angle increases, the direction of crack initiation and propagation is changed to towards the intact rock. The existence of joint set have significant influence on crack initiation and propagation, it makes the crack prone to propagate along the joint.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.20 no.8
• /
• pp.181-191
• /
• 2004

For a rigid retaining wall with rough face, the magnitude and distribution of active earth pressure on the wall are affected by the shape of failure surface and arching effect developed in the backfill as well as internal friction angle of the backfill and wall friction angle. Therefore, the practical shape of failure surface and arching effect in the backfill must be considered to acquire accurate magnitude and non-linear distribution of active earth pressure acting on the rigid retaining wall. In this study, a new formulation for calculating the active earth pressure on a rough rigid retaining wall rotating about the top is proposed considering the practical shape of non-linear failure surface and arching effects. Accuracy of the proposed equation is checked through comparisons of calculations from the proposed equations with existing model test results. The comparisons show that the proposed equations produce satisfactory results.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
• /
• v.25 no.3
• /
• pp.284-292
• /
• 2015

The generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion, the strength parameters of which are determined by using the GSI index, is an empirical nonlinear failure criterion of rock mass and has been widely employed in various rock engineering practices. Many rock engineering practitioners, however, are still familiar with the description of the strength of rock mass in terms of friction angle and cohesion. In addition, almost all rock mechanics softwares incorporate the simple linear Mohr-Coulomb function. Therefore, it is necessary to provide a tool to implement the Hoek-Brown function in the framework of the Mohr-Coulomb criterion. In this study, the use of upper-bound solution of limit analysis for bearing capacity of a strip footing resting on the ground surface is proposed for the estimation of the equivalent friction angle and cohesion of rock mass incorporating the generalized Hoek-Brown failure criterion. The upper-bound bearing capacity is expressed in terms of friction angle by use of the relationship between tangential friction angle and tangential cohesion implied in the generalized Hoek-Brown function. The friction angle minimizing the upper-bound bearing capacity is taken as the equivalent friction angle. Through the illustrative implementations of the proposed method, the influences of GSI, $m_i$ and D on the equivalent friction angle and cohesion are investigated.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.2 no.2
• /
• pp.89-106
• /
• 2010

Sliding within the dam foundation is one of the key failure modes of a gravity dam. A two-dimensional (2-D) physical model test has been conducted to study the sliding failure of a concrete gravity dam under overloading conditions. This model dam was instrumented with strain rosettes, linear variable displacement transformers (LVDTs), and embedded fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensing bars. The surface and internal displacements of the dam structure and the strain distributions on the dam body were measured with high accuracy. The setup of the model with instrumentation is described and the monitoring data are presented and analyzed in this paper. The deformation process and failure mechanism of dam sliding within the rock foundation are investigated based on the test results. It is found that the horizontal displacements at the toe and heel indicate the dam stability condition. During overloading, the cracking zone in the foundation can be simplified as a triangle with gradually increased height and vertex angle.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
• /
• 2003.03a
• /
• pp.499-502
• /
• 2003

The purpose of this study is to understand the sliding characteristics of the infilling-joint surface using the new devised shear test apparatus with changeable slope for the original infilling materials and the infilling materials experienced cyclic freezing-thawing processes. Three types of the mother rock classified as the igneous rock, the metamorphic rock and the sedimentary rock and the infilling materials were collected for laboratory test. The cohesion according to the slope change of the rock joint shows large variation within ${\pm}$5 degrees but the internal friction angle shows appears the linear decreasing tendency. It is confirmed that the affecting factor of slope change of rock joint at the behavior of rock mass is larger than that of the infilling thickness. Test results show that the cohesion and the internal friction angle in 100 times of cyclic freezing-thawing processes are decreased about 50 percent compared with original one. A further study using various infillings materials would lead to a better understanding of the failure mechanism of rock mass by slope change of rock joint.

• Tunnel and Underground Space
• /
• v.15 no.3 s.56
• /
• pp.228-235
• /
• 2005

Friction angle and cohesion of rock masses can be estimated from Hoek and Brown failure criterion and then plastic corrections can be applied using Mohr-Coulomb yield function. This study finds that this estimation procedure would not be appropriate for weak rock masses and for cases where low confining stress is expected to develop. A procedure is outlined in this paper for estimating plastic corrections directly from Hoek and Brown material model. Comparative study shows that direct procedure would simulate non-linear failure surface better than indirect procedure especially in the low confining stress regime.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
• /
• v.31 no.5
• /
• pp.519-527
• /
• 2022

Shear failure in soil is the primary cause of most geotechnical structure failures or instability. Soil water content is a significant factor affecting soil shear strength. In this study, the shear strength of samples with different water contents was tested. The shear strength, cohesion, and internal friction angle decreased with increasing water content. Based on the variation of cohesion and internal friction angle, the water content zone was divided into a high-water content zone and low-water content zone with a threshold water content of 15.05%. Cohesion and internal friction angle have a good linear relationship with water content in both zones. Environmental Scanning Electron Microscopy (ESEM) test presented that the aggregates size of the compacted loess gradually increases with increasing water content. Meanwhile, the clay in the compacted loess forms a matric that envelops around the surface of the aggregates and fills the inter-aggregates pores. A quantitative analysis of bound water and free water under different water contents using a nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) test was carried out. The threshold water content between bound water and free water was slightly below the plastic limit, which is consistent with the results of shear strength parameters. Combined with the T2 distributions obtained by NMR, one can define a T2 relaxation time of 1.58 ms as the boundary point for bound water distribution without free water. Finally, the effects of bound water and free water on shear strength parameters were analyzed using linear regression analysis.

• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
• /
• v.14 no.4
• /
• pp.293-308
• /
• 2012

The shear behavior at the particle/surface interface such as rock joint can determine the mechanical behavior of whole structure. Therefore, a fundamental understanding of the mechanisms governing its behavior and accurately estimation of the interface strength is essential. In this paper, PFC, a numerical analysis program of discrete element method was used to investigate the effects of the surface roughness on interface strength. The surface roughness was characterized by smooth, intermediate, and rough surface, respectively. In order to investigate the effects of particle shape and crushing on particle/surface interface behavior, one ball, clump, and cluster models were created and their results were compared. The shape of particle was characterized by circle, triangle, square, and rectangle, respectively. The results showed that as the surface roughness increases, interface strength and friction angle increase and the void ratio increases. The one ball model with smooth surface shows lower interface strength and friction angle than the clump model with irregular surface. In addition, a cluster model has less interface strength and friction angle than the clump model. The failure envelope of the cluster model shows non-linear characteristic. From these findings, it is verified that the surface roughness and particle shape effect on the particle/surface interface shear behavior.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
• /
• v.24 no.8
• /
• pp.53-60
• /
• 2008

In this study, various kinds of behavior characteristics such as deformation area zone of back ground, failure angle and rotation point are examined on the laterally loaded single pile in the homogeneous ground through a model test. The main obtained conclusions are summarized as follows; In the back ground of single pile to which the lateral load is applied, failure surface shows almost linear movement characteristics and it is inclined to converge to constant values no matter how the length of pile and the pile head displacement.