• Nuclear Engineering and Technology
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• v.55 no.2
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• pp.523-529
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• 2023

Cemented uranium tailings backfill created from alkali-activated slag (CUTB) is an effective method of disposing of uranium tailings. Using some environmental functional minerals with ion exchange, adsorption, and solidification abilities as backfill modified materials may improve the leaching resistance of the CUTB. Natural zeolite, which has good ion exchange and adsorption characteristics, is selected as the backfill modified material, and it is added to the backfill materials with cementitious material proportions of 4%, 8%, 12%, and 16% to prepare CUTB mixtures with environmental functional minerals. After the addition of natural zeolite, the uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of the CUTB decreases, but the leaching resistance of the CUTB increases. When the natural zeolite content is 12%, the UCS reaches the minimum value of 8.95 MPa, and the concentration of uranium in the leaching solution is 0.28-8.07 mg/L, the leaching rate R₄₂ is 9.61×10^-7 cm/d, and cumulative leaching fraction P₄₂ is 8.53×10^-4 cm, which shows that the alkali-activated slag cementitious material has a good curing effect on the CUTB, and the addition of environmental functional minerals helps to further improve the leaching resistance of the CUTB, but it reduces the UCS to an extent.

• Journal of Environmental Science International
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• v.27 no.2
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• pp.75-81
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• 2018

At present research on mining backfill materials is being carried out to prevent ground subsidence and breaking by underground cavern of exhausted mines. However, backfill materials can cause secondary environmental issues such as ground pollution. To solve these issues, liner and cover materials are constructed before backfill materials constructed, to inhibit toxic substances form moving to the surroundings. Liner and cover materials, however, should have an accelerating performance after construction and when the accelerating performance is degraded, the work efficiency can be lowered, and the construction cost can be increased, by many rebound content. Therefore, this study develops mining liner and cover materials, and evaluates their accelerating performance and physical properties of liner and cover materials by types and content of accelerating agent. In case of aluminate accelerating agent, it is mixed with more than 5% of liner and cover materials(binder/ratio); thus an accelerating performance satisfying Korean Industrial Standards(KS) occurs, and in case of alkali-free accelerating agent, when it is mixed with more than 7%(binder/ratio), accelerating performance satisfying KS occurs. The more the accelerating agent capacity increases, the more compressive strength decreases. In addition, it is confirmed that compressive strength of aluminate accelerating agent is more degraded than compressive strength of the alkali-free accelerating agent. It is also confirmed that drying shrinkage stability of the alkali-free accelerating agent is better than the drying shrinkage stability of the aluminate accelerating agent.

• Journal of the Korea Academia-Industrial cooperation Society
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• v.20 no.12
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• pp.15-20
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• 2019

This paper evaluated the construction costs of 11 design cases to decrease the horizontal forces applied to the abutment. They include two abutment types, which are to improve backfill materials for a reversed T-shaped abutment and geosynthetic Reinforced Abutment for Railways (RAR). The first type of economic analysis was that the internal friction angles of backfill materials were increased from Φ=35° to Φ=40° and 50° for a reversed T-shaped abutment. In addition, the second type was the cases with the design of geosynthetic RAR. When friction angles of 40° or 50° were applied through the improvement of the backfill material, the decrease in construction cost of the abutment was not large (2.0~3.9%), even though the horizontal forces applied to the abutment had decreased to 18~48%. In the case of applying the RAR, however, a maximum 30% cost reduction was evaluated by the decrease in horizontal force to "0" theoretically. The cost reduction resulted from the decrease in wall thickness, base slab size, and number and material change of pile foundation for the abutment.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.81-95
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• 2019

Due to the importance of soil reinforcement using geotextiles in geotechnical engineering, study and investigation into long-term performance, design life and survivability of geotextiles, especially due to installation damage are necessary and will affect their economy. During installation, spreading and compaction of backfill materials, geotextiles may encounter severe stresses which can be higher than they will experience in-service. This paper aims to investigate the installation damage of geotextiles, in order to obtain a good approach to the estimation of the material's strength reduction factor. A series of full-scale tests were conducted to simulate the installation process. The study includes four deliberately poorly-graded backfill materials, two kinds of subgrades with different CBR values, three nonwoven needle-punched geotextiles of classes 1, 2 and 3 (according to AASHTO M288-08) and two different relative densities for the backfill materials. Also, to determine how well or how poorly the geotextiles tolerated the imposed construction stresses, grab tensile tests and visual inspections were carried out on geotextile specimens (before and after installation). Visual inspections of the geotextiles revealed sedimentation of fine-grained particles in all specimens and local stretching of geotextiles by larger soil particles which exerted some damage. A regression model is proposed to reliably predict the installation damage reduction factor. The results, obtained by grab tensile tests and via the proposed models, indicated that the strength reduction factor due to installation damage was reduced as the median grain size and relative density of the backfill decreases, stress transferred to the geotextiles' level decreases and as the as-received grab tensile strength of geotextile and the subgrades' CBR value increase.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.85-93
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• 2018

A existing standard design section of transitional zone between bridge and earthwork section in high speed railway should be designed to gradually change support stiffness from bridge abutment to backfill side that were placed on cemented stabilized gravel, general gravel, soil materials. The larger the backfill slope of the general gravel and soil was more structurally stable, but there is no clear reason about them. In this study, it was compared with settlement and bearing capacity of backfill area in currently design and alternating backfill slope section using large centrifuge tester. As the experimental results, it was showed that the 1:2 slope and 1:1.5 slope have almost similar bearing capacity behavior under the load stage as railway loading level.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.14 no.7
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• pp.5-12
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• 2013

The safety and structural integrity of buried pipes are usually at risk from constructing loading and compaction of backfill materials. The backfill material should be strong enough to help resistance and redistribute loads so that the buried pipe remains unaffected. Due to the many problems associated with buried pipes, there have been multiple studies on the development of a sustainable backfill material. In this study, a Controlled Low Strength Material made of coal ash was considered as a buried pipe backfill material. To determine the feasibility and performance of this backfill material, a numerical simulation was conducted with the results confirmed by a field test. Results showed maximum settlement to be 2 mm with the elastic strain of the buried pipe to be about 0.006.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 1995.10a
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• pp.201-210
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• 1995

In Resent years, urban tunnels have been more deeply constructed due to the congestion of buried steuctures. In such conditions, the shield method has become one of the popular urban tunnelling method by reason of several characteristics ; safety of construction, mimium environmental damage, and workbility. In tunnelling, the space which is tail-void are created between the ground and the other face of the primary lining. in other to reduce the ground seformation, it is important backfilling in tail-void. In this paper, the result of an experimental investigation undertaken to evaluate the physical and mechanical propeties of grouts composed of various mixtures of backfill materials. And the backfill injection model test was carried out considering the effects of tail-void.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2000.03b
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• pp.419-426
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• 2000

The purpose of this study is to present the application of WFS co-mixtures for retaining wall as flowable backfill. The fly ash, generated at the Tae-An thermoelectric power plant, was used in this research and was classified as Class F. Green Sand, Furane Sand, and Coated Sand, which had been used at a foundry located in Pusan, were used. Couple of laboratory tests and small scale retaining wall tests were performed to obtain the physical properties of the WFS co-mixtures and the possibility of backfill materials of retaining wall. The range of permeability for all the co-mixtures was from 3.0${\times}$10$\^$-3/ cm/s to 6.0${\times}$10$\^$-5/ cm/s. The unconfined strength of the 28-day cured specimens reached around 550kPa. Results of the consolidated-undrained triaxial test showed that the internal friction angle is between 33.5$^{\circ}$ and 41.8$^{\circ}$. The lateral earth pressure against wall decreased up to 80% of initial pressure within a 12 hours and the total lateral earth pressure is less than that of typical granular soil. It was enough to construct the backfill for the standard retaining of 6m with just two steps, like fill the co-mixtures for half of retaining wall, and then fill the others after 1 day. The stability of retaining wall for overturning and sliding increased as the curing time elapsed.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.395-404
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• 2005

This study is to evaluate the physical and mechanical characteristics of flowable backfill and search for the optimal mixture contents of it used for constructing underground power utilities. flowable backfill is known as soil-cement slurry, void fill, and controlled low-strength material(CLSM). The benefits of CLSM include reduced equipment costs, faster construction, re-excavation in the future, and the ability to place material in confined spaces such as narrow parts nearly impossible for compaction or perimeter of underground power cables. The flowable slurry mixture made with 9 types of soil and 6 types of accelerated mixtures in the laboratory were evaluated for bleeding, flowability, heat resistance, and unconfined compressive strength to meet the aim values of this study.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.11 no.10
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• pp.15-24
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• 2010

In the case of underground power utilities pipe such as circular pipe, the most difficult problem is low compaction efficiency of the bottom of pipe inducing the failure of utilities. To overcome this problem, various studies have been performed and one of these is CLSM(Controlled Low Strength Materials) accelerated flow ability. But underground power utilities pipe backfill materials is also needed to have good thermal property that can dissipate the heat as rapidly as it is generated. So, in this study, we performed thermal resistancy test for various materials such as sand, weathered soil, clay and mixed soil to analyze the thermal characteristics of CLSM(Controlled Low Strength Materials) with accelerated flow ability for various conditions(water content, unit weight, void ratio, curing time) and to evaluate the applicability for backfill material of underground power utilities pipe. The test results of 16 specimens for thermal resistancy test showed good thermal property that maintained below $85^{\circ}C\;cm/W$.