• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.2
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• pp.179-191
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• 2021

In this study, the strength and failure mechanism of red sandstones with combined defects were investigated by uniaxial compression tests on red sandstones with different crack angles using two-dimensional particle flow code numerical software, and their mechanical parameters and failure process were studied and analyzed. The results showed that the mechanical characteristics such as peak strength, peak strain, and elastic modulus of the samples with prefabricated combined defects were significantly inferior than those of the intact samples. With increasing crack angle from 15° to 60°, the weakening area of cracks increased, elastic modulus, peak strength, and peak strain gradually reduced, the total number of cracks increased, and more strain energy was released. In addition, the samples underwent initial brittle failure to plastic failure stage, and the failure form was more significant, leading to peeling phenomenon. However, with increasing crack angle from 75° to 90°, the crack-hole combination shared the stress concentration at the tip of the crack-crack combination, resulted in a gradual increase in elastic modulus, peak strain and peak strength, but a decrease in the number of total cracks, the release of strain energy reduced, the plastic failure state weakened, and the spalling phenomenon slowed down. On this basis, the samples with 30° and 45° crack-crack combination were selected for further experimental investigation. Through comparative analysis between the experimental and simulation results, the failure strength and final failure mode with cracks propagation of samples were found to be relatively similar.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Surveying, Geodesy, Photogrammetry and Cartography
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.113-122
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• 2021

Urban expansion, particularly converting sub-urban areas to residential and commercial land use in metropolitan areas, has been considered as a significant signal of regional economic development. However, this results in urban climate change. One of the key impacts of rapid urbanization on the environment is the effect of UHI (Urban Heat Island). Understanding the effects of urban land cover change on UHI is crucial for improving the ecology and sustainability of cities. This research reports an application of remote sensing data, GIS (Geographic Information Systems) for assessing effects of urban land cover change on the LST (Land Surface Temperature) and heat budget components in Ho Chi Minh City, where is one of the fastest urbanizing region of Vietnam. The change of urban land cover component and LST in the city was derived by using multi-temporal Landsat data for the period of 1998 - 2020. The analysis showed that, from 1998 to 2020 the city had been drastically urbanized into multiple directions, with the urban areas increasing from approximately 125.281 km² in 1998 to 162.6 km² in 2007, and 267.2 km² in 2020, respectively. The results of retrieved LST revealed the radiant temperature for 1998 ranging from 20.2℃ to 31.2℃, while that for 2020 remarkably higher ranging from 22.1℃ to 42.3℃. The results also revealed that given the same percentage of urban land cover components, vegetation area is more effective to reduce the value of LST, meanwhile the impervious surface is the most effective factor to increase the value of the LST.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.11 no.2
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• pp.197-209
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• 2016

Clayey rock has large clay mineral content. When in contact with water, this expands considerably and may present a significant hazard to the stability of the rock in geotechnical engineering applications. This is particularly important in the present work, which focused on mitigating some unwelcomed properties of clayey rock. Changes in its physical properties were simulated by subjecting the rock to a low voltage direct current (DC) using copper, steel and aluminum electrodes. The modified mechanism of the coupled electrical and chemical fields acting on the clayey rock was analyzed. It was concluded that the essence of clayey rock electrochemical modification is the electrokinetic effect of the DC field, together with the coupled hydraulic and electrical potential gradients in fine-grained clayey rock, including ion migration, electrophoresis and electro-osmosis. The aluminum cathodes were corroded and generated gibbsite at the anode; the steel and copper cathodes showed no obvious change. The electrical resistivity and uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) of the modified specimens from the anode, intermediate and cathode zones tended to decrease. Samples taken from these zones showed a positive correlation between electric resistivity and UCS.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.21 no.1
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• pp.123-137
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• 2018

Structural monitoring is the most important part of the construction and operation of the embankment dams. Appropriate instruments selection for dams is vital, as inappropriate selection causes irreparable loss in critical condition. Due to the lack of a systematic approach to determine adequate instruments, a framework based on three comparable Multi-Attribute Decision Making (MADM) methods, which are VIKOR, technique of order preference by similarity to ideal solution (TOPSIS) and Preference ranking organization method for enrichment evaluation (PROMETHEE), has been developed. MADM techniques have been widely used for optimizing priorities and determination of the most suitable alternatives. However, the results of the different methods of MADM have indicated inconsistency in ranking alternatives due to closeness of judgements from decision makers. In this study, 9 criteria and 42 geotechnical instruments have been applied. A new method has been developed to determine the decision makers' importance weights and an aggregation method has been introduced to optimally select the most suitable instruments. Consequently, the outcomes of the aggregation ranking correlate about 94% with TOPSIS and VIKOR, and 83% with PROMETHEE methods' results providing remarkably appropriate prioritisation of instruments for embankment dams.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.85-105
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• 2017

Monitoring is the most important part of the construction and operation of the embankment dams. Applied instruments in these dams should be determined based on dam requirements and specifications. Instruments selection considered as one of the most important steps of monitoring plan. Competent instruments selection for dams is very important, as inappropriate selection causes irreparable loss in critical condition. Lack of a systematic method for determining instruments has been considered as a problem for creating an efficient selection. Nowadays, decision making methods have been used widely in different sciences for optimal determination and selection. In this study, the Multi-Attribute Decision Making is applied by considering 9 criteria and categorisation of 8 groups of geotechnical instruments. Therefore, the Analytic Hierarchy Process and Multi-Criteria Optimisation and Compromise Solution methods are employed in order to determine the attributes' importance weights and to prioritise of instruments for embankment dams, respectively. This framework was applied for a rock fill with clay core dam. The results indicated that group decision making optimizes the selection and prioritisation of monitoring instruments for embankment dams, and selected instruments are reliable based on the dam specifications.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.6 no.3
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• pp.251-262
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• 2015

In this work the preparation and characterization of a membrane containing a uniform mesoporous Titanium oxide top layer on a porous stainless steel substrate has been studied. The 316 L stainless steel substrate was prepared by powder metallurgy technique and modified by soaking-rolling and fast drying method. The mesoporous titania membrane was fabricated via the sol-gel method. Morphological studies were performed on both supported and unsupported membranes using scanning electron microscope (SEM) and field emission scanning microscope (FESEM). The membranes were also characterized using X-ray diffraction (XRD) and $N_2$-adsorption / desorption measurement (BET analyses). It was revealed that a defect-free anatase membrane with a thickness of $1.6{\mu}m$ and 4.3 nm average pore size can be produced. In order to evaluate the performance of the supported membrane, single-gas permeation experiments were carried out at room temperature with nitrogen gas. The permeability coefficient of the fabricated membrane was $4{\times}10^{-8}\;lit\;s^{-1}\;Pa^{-1}\;cm^{-1}$.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.215-224
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• 2019

Excavation of long tunnels by shielded TBMs is a safe, fast, and efficient method of tunneling that mitigates many risks related to ground conditions. However, long-distance tunneling in great depth through adverse geological conditions brings about limitations in the application of TBMs. Among various harsh geological conditions, squeezing ground as a consequence of tunnel wall and face convergence could lead to cluttered blocking, shield jamming and in some cases failure in the support system. These issues or a combination of them could seriously hinder the performance of TBMs. The technique of excavation has a strong influence on the tunnel response when it is excavated under squeezing conditions. The Golab water conveyance tunnel was excavated by a double-shield TBM. This tunnel passes mainly through metamorphic weak rocks with up to 650 m overburden. These metamorphic rocks (Shales, Slates, Phyllites and Schists) together with some fault zones are incapable of sustaining high tangential stresses. Prediction of the convergence, estimation of the creeping effects and presenting strategies to overcome the squeezing ground are regarded as challenging tasks for the tunneling engineer. In this paper, the squeezing potential of the rock mass is investigated in specific regions by dint of numerical and analytical methods. Subsequently, several operational solutions which were conducted to counteract the challenges are explained in detail.

• The Journal of Asian Finance, Economics and Business
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• v.8 no.2
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• pp.809-820
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• 2021

The study aimed to investigate the impact of sectoral bank credit facilities provided by commercial banks on the non-oil economic growth in Saudi Arabia. Bank credit facilities are given for nine economic sectors: agriculture, manufacturing, mining, electricity and water, health services, construction, wholesale and retail trade, transportation and communications, services, and finance sector. The study employs annual data from 1970 to 2019. The study employs the Autoregressive Distributed Lag (ARDL) approach to identify the long-run and short-run dynamics relationships among the variables. The main results reveal that the overall impact of total bank credit has a significant and positive effect on non-oil economic growth in KSA. The results revealed that the effect of bank credit on the non-oil GDP growth in the short and long run was uneven. The study finds that all sectors have a positive and significant impact in the long run, except for the agricultural and mining sectors. Likewise, all sectors have a positive and significant impact in the short run, except for construction, finance, services, and transportation & communications. As a result, bank credit facilities in different sectors have played an important role in enhancing the non-oil economic growth in the KSA.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.30 no.6
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• pp.551-564
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• 2022

Fragmenting the rock mass is considered as the most important work in open-pit mines. Ground vibration is the most hazardous issue of blasting which can cause critical damage to the surrounding structures. This paper focuses on developing an explicit model to predict the ground vibration through an multi objective evolutionary polynomial regression (MOGA-EPR). To this end, a database including 79 sets of data related to a quarry site in Malaysia were used. In addition, a gene expression programming (GEP) model and several empirical equations were employed to predict ground vibration, and their performances were then compared with the MOGA-EPR model using the mean absolute error (MAE), root mean square error (RMSE), mean (𝜇), standard deviation of the mean (𝜎), coefficient of determination (R²) and a20-index. Comparing the results, it was found that the MOGA-EPR model predicted the ground vibration more precisely than the GEP model and the empirical equations, where the MOGA-EPR scored lower MAE and RMSE, 𝜇 and 𝜎 closer to the optimum value, and higher R² and a20-index. Accordingly, the proposed MOGA-EPR model can be introduced as a useful method to predict ground vibration and has the capacity to be generalized to predict other blasting effects.

• Computers and Concrete
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• v.22 no.4
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• pp.407-417
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• 2018

Over the past three decades, self-compacting concrete (SCC), which is characterized by its superior rheological properties, has been gradually used in construction industry. It is now recognized that the application of SCC using supplementary cementitious materials (SCM) is highly attractive and promising technology reducing the environmental impact of the construction industry and reducing the higher materials costs. This paper presents an experimental study that investigated the mechanical and durability properties of SCCs manufactured with blended binders including fly ash, slag, and micro-silica. A total of 8 batches of SCCs were manufactured. As series of tests were conducted to establish the rheological properties, compressive strength, and durability properties including the water absorption, water permeability, rapid chloride permeability and initial surface absorption of the SCCs. The influences of the SCC strength grade, blended types and content on the properties of the SCCs are investigated. Unified reactive indices are proposed based on the mix proportion and the chemical composition of the corresponding binders are used to assess the compressive strength and strength development of the SCCs. The results also indicate the differences in the underlying mechanisms to drive the durability properties of the SCC at the different strength grades.