• Journal of The Korean Society of Agricultural Engineers
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• v.54 no.3
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• pp.55-63
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• 2012

Soil properties are not random values which is represented by mean and standard deviation but show spatial correlation. Especially, soils are highly variable in their properties and rarely homogeneous. Thus, the accuracy and reliability of probabilistic analysis results is decreased when using only one random variable as design parameter. In this paper, to consider spatial variability of soil property, one-dimensional random fields of coefficient of consolidation ($C_v$) were generated based on a Karhunen-Loeve expansion. A Latin hypercube Monte Calro simulation coupled with finite difference method for Terzaghi's one dimensional consolidation theory was then used to probabilistic analysis. The results show that the failure probability is smaller when consider spatial variability of $C_v$ than not considered and the failure probability increased when the autocorrelation distance increased. Thus, the uncertainty of soil can be overestimated when spatial variability of soil property is not considered, and therefore, to perform a more accurate probabilistic analysis, spatial variability of soil property needed to be considered.