• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.67-84
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• 2005

This research was conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of reinforcement for nearly saturated soft clay compaction. The effectiveness was investigated by roller compaction test using nearly saturated clay specimens. The nearly saturated condition was obtained by submerging clay in the water for 12 hours. High water content specimens were compacted in plane strain condition by a steel roller. A specimen was compacted by four 5 cm horizontal layers. Specimens were prepared fur both reinforced and unreinforced cases to evaluate the effectiveness of reinforcement. Used reinforcement is a composite consisted of both woven and non-woven geotextile. The composite usually provides drainage and tensile reinforcement to hi인 water-contented clay so that it increases bearing capacity. Therefore, large compaction load can be applied to reinforced clay and it achieves higher density effectively. The reinforcement also increases compaction efficiency because it reduces the ratio between shear and vertical forces during compaction process. The maximum vertical stress on the base of specimen usually decreased with higher compaction thickness. The reinforcement increases soil stiffness under the compaction roller and it initiates stress concentration. As a result, it maintains higher vertical stress level on the base of specimen that provides better compaction characteristics. Based on test results, it can be concluded that the reinforcement is essential to achieve effective compaction on soft clay.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.17 no.3
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• pp.5-12
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• 2016

Stone column is the method that replace soft ground such as weak clay and loose sand with gravel or crushed stone which has relatively high stiffness and low compressive. Stone column increases bearing capacity of the soft ground, reduces settlement, produces ground improvement effect by consolidation drain, and is effective to prevent soil liquefaction in sandy ground during an earthquake. Stone column has been used in many civil works, and has recorded quite a lot of construction achievement internationally, but there is no standardized settlement calculation method yet. Therefore, in this study, the applicability of the existing theoretical equations were evaluated through comparison and analysis to predict a reasonable settlement of the Stone column. Consequently, Hook's law formula was verified to be the most close to numerical analysis.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.863-870
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• 2017

With the increasing interest in using bacterial biofilms in geo-engineering practices, such as soil improvement, sealing leakage in earth structures, and hydraulic barrier installation, understanding of the contribution of bacterial biofilm formation to mechanical and hydraulic behavior of soils is important. While mechanical properties of soft gel-like biofilms need to be identified for appropriate modeling and prediction of behaviors of biofilm-associated soils, elastic properties of biofilms remain poorly understood. Therefore, this study investigated the microscale Young's modulus of biofilms produced by Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 in a liquid phase. The indentation test was performed on a biofilm sample using the atomic force microscopy (AFM) with a spherical indentor, and the force-indentation responses were obtained during approach and retraction traces. Young's modulus of biofilms was estimated to be ~33-38 kPa from these force-indentation curves and Hertzian contact theory. It appears that the AFM indentation result captures the microscale local characteristics of biofilms and its stiffness is relatively large compared to the other methods, including rheometer and hydrodynamic shear tests, which reflect the average macro-scale behaviors. While modeling of mechanical behaviors of biofilm-associated soils requires the properties of each component, the obtained results provide information on the mechanical properties of biofilms that can be considered as cementing, gluing, or filling materials in soils.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2000.03b
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• pp.607-614
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• 2000

Settlement with crack on the hardened liners may occur in the weak clay due to waste load since the stiffness of the hardened liner is greater than that of the clay layers. Way of reducing deformation crack in the hardened liner is investigated using two computer programs, CONSOL and FLAC. The computer program CONSOL estimates the magnitude of settlement with time in clay layers and FLAC analyses the stress and deformation relationship between the foundation of landfill and waste load. The results show that a representative block of the analyzed area reaches the consolidation settlement of 1.32m, 8.8 years after the disposal of waste started with the degree of consolidation U=90%. The stress within the hardened liner exceeds the allowable vertical stress of 5kg/$\textrm{cm}^2$ and horizontal stress of 1.67kg/$\textrm{cm}^2$ at the concave part of the liner where the main and branch drainage pipes of leachate are located. It was recognized that the thickness of the interested area should be enlarged or the strength of the same area should be improved to tolerate the planned waste load.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.16 no.6
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• pp.635-642
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• 2018

Braced excavation systems are commonly required to ensure stability in construction of basements for shopping malls, underground transportation and other habitation facilities. For excavations in deposits of soft clays or residual soils, stiff retaining wall systems such as diaphragm walls are commonly adopted to restrain the ground movements and wall deflections in order to prevent damage to surrounding buildings and utilities. The ground surface settlement behind the excavation is closely associated with the magnitude of basal heave and the wall deflections and is also greatly influenced by the possible groundwater drawdown caused by potential wall leakage, flow from beneath the wall, flow from perched water and along the wall interface or poor panel connections due to the less satisfactory quality. This paper numerically investigates the influences of excavation geometries, the system stiffness, the soil properties and the groundwater drawdown on ground surface settlement and develops a simplified maximum surface settlement Logarithm Regression model for the maximum ground surface settlement estimation. The settlements estimated by this model compare favorably with a number of published and instrumented records.

• Structural Monitoring and Maintenance
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• v.9 no.1
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• pp.1-27
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• 2022

Extensive laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the effect of load amplitude, geogrid position, and number of geogrid layers, thickness of ballast layer and clay stiffness on behavior of reinforced ballast layer and induced strains in geogrid. A half full-scale railway was constructed for carrying out the tests, the model consists of two rails 800 mm in length with three wooden sleepers (900 mm × 10 mm × 10 mm). The ballast was overlying 500 mm thickness clay in two states, soft and stiff state. Laboratory tests were conducted to investigate the response of the ballast and the clay layers where the ballast was reinforced by a geogrid. Settlement in ballast and clay, soil pressure and pore water pressure induced in the clay were measured in reinforced and unreinforced ballast cases. It was concluded that the effect of frequency on the settlement ratio is almost constant after 500 cycles. This is due to that the total settlement after 500 cycles, almost reached its peak value, which means that the ballast particles become very close to each other, so the frequency is less effective for high contact particles forces. The average maximum vertical stress and pore water pressure increased with frequency.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.14 no.4
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• pp.23-33
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• 2015

Together with the wall stiffness, a berm has the role of deciding the stability of a temporary retaining wall before structure installation after excavation. Especially in case of loose or soft soil excavated ground, the role of berm is very important. In this study, the measurement data obtained from the temporary retaining wall in the bermed excavation site in urban and numerical analysis are used to investigate the effects of berm's dimension (width and slope), excavation depth and ground property on the maximum horizontal displacement of the temporary retaining wall. The measurement data indicated that the wall displacement varied to the berm's width. That is, as the berm width decreased, the wall displacement increased. As a result of numerical analyses, the maximum wall displacement increased as slope increased and berm width decreased. This means that the berm is effectively restrained to the wall displacement. As excavation depth increased, the effect of berm's slope and width increased. In case of the same berm condition, the wall displacement restrained as ground property increased.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.17 no.6
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• pp.507-513
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• 2019

Reinforced soil and Expanded Polystyrenes (EPS) mixture (RSEM) is a geomaterial which has many merits, such as light weight, wide strength range, easy for construction, and economic feasibility. It has been widely applied to improve soft ground, solve bridge head jump, fill cavity in pipeline and widen highway. Reutilizing dredged sediment to produce RSEM as earthfill can not only consume a large amount of waste sediment but also significantly reduce the construction cost. Therefore, there is an urgent need understand the basic stress-strain characteristics of reinforced dredged sediment-EPS mixture (RDSEM). A series of cyclic triaxial tests were then carried out on the RDSEM and control clay. The effects of cement content, EPS beads content and confining pressure on the cyclic stress-strain behaviour of RDSEM were analyzed. It is found that the three stages of dynamic stress-strain relationship of ordinary soil, vibration compaction stage, vibration shear stage and vibration failure stage are also applicative for RDSEM. The cyclic stress-strain curves of RDSEM are lower than that of control clay in the vibration compaction stage because of its high moisture content. The slopes of backbone curves of RDSEMs in the vibration shear stage are larger than that of control clay, indicating that the existence of EPS beads provides plastic resistance. With the increase of cement content, the cyclic stress-strain relationship tends to be steeper. Increasing cement content and confining pressure could improve the cyclic strength and cyclic stiffness of RDSEM.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.13 no.3
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• pp.53-58
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• 2012

In general, sand compaction pile(SCP) method and gravel compaction pile(GCP) method have been mainly used to reinforce soft soils such as soft clay or loose sandy ground. But the sand compaction pile method has problems such as lack of sand supply and destroying the nature while collecting sand, the gravel compaction pile method has a problem such as decreased permeability of the drainage material due to clogging. Recently, the study to replace sand with bottom ash which has similar engineering properties with sand is in active. As a fundamental research on bottom ash mixture compaction pile utilizing bottom ash, its behavioral characteristics depending on granular materials and replacement ratio has been simulated numerically. In particular, Settlement Reduction Ratio(SRR) according to the distance from the center of pile was calculated. The main findings were as follows. Change values of Mixture Compaction Pile's SRR according to granular materials showed similar patterns and stiffness of the composite soil is increased depending on the replacement ratio so SRR showed decreased patterns. Especially, when the replacement ratio is in 20~40%, it increase significantly. When the replacement ratio is over 40%, it increase slowly. When considering the economics, 30~40% replacement ratio is appropriate.

• Geophysics and Geophysical Exploration
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• v.19 no.4
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• pp.187-199
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• 2016

In order to delineate the soft ground distribution, an integrated geostatistical analysis was performed using the MASW (Multichannel Analysis of Surface Wave) which has the information of overall region and CPTu (Piezo Cone Penetration Test) which provides the direct information of the measuring point of the ground. MASW results were known to have close relationship with the ground stiffness. This correlation was confirmed through the comparison of MASW data obtained from two survey lines to the laboratory test with extracted soil samples. 3D physical property distribution in the study area was acquired by geostatistical integrated analysis with the data of tip resistance ($q_c$) and pore pressure (u) from the CPTu obtained at 6 points within the study area. The integrated analysis was conducted by applying the COSGSIM (Sequential Gaussian Co-Simulation) technology which can carry out the simulation in accordance with the spatial correlation between the MASW results and both tip resistance and pore pressure. Besides the locations of CPTu, borehole investigations were also conducted at two different positions. As a result, the N value of SPT and borehole log could be secured, so these data were used for the analysis of the geotechnical engineering accuracy of the integrated analysis result. For the verification of reliability of the 3D distribution of tip resistance and pore pressure secured through integrated analysis, the geotechnical information gained from the two drilling areas was compared, and the result showed extremely high correlation.