• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.15 no.2
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• pp.249-267
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• 2003

In this study, circular plates subjected to general type of loads and supported on a two-parameter elastic foundation are analysed. The stiffness, elastic bedding and soil shear effect matrices of a fully compatible ring sector plate element, developed by Saygun (1974), are obtained numerically assuming variable thickness of the element. Ring sector soil finite element is also defined to determine the deflection of the soil surface outside the domain of the plate in order to establish the interaction between the plate and the soil. According to Vallabhan and Das (1991) the elastic bedding (C) and shear parameters ($C_T$) of the foundation are expressed depending on the elastic constants ($E_s$, $V_s$) and the thickness of compressible soil layer ($H_s$) and they are calculated with a suitable iterative procedure. Using ring sector elements presented in this paper, permits the generalization of the loading and the boundary conditions of the soil outside the plate.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.334-341
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• 2008

Ballast track needs maintenance works because it is supported by the compressible trackbed and subgrade layers. Maintenance works are essential to secure riding comfort and extend the life cycle of it. The necessities of maintenance works are determined from track irregularities measured by EM120. Track irregularities is the results of the track deformation. Therefore, it is natural to evaluate the cause of it. This paper focuses on the points the track irregularities come from the trackbed and the subgrade. Nondestructive techniques, such as Ground Penetrating Radar (GPR) and Portable Falling Weight Deflectometer (PFWD) are applied to evaluate the trackbed conditions, ballast layer thickness and vertical track stiffness, in the test section 500m long of Gyungbu line. The trackbed investigation results are compared with the track irregularities measured by EM120 and maintenance works. Conclusively, it was found that some maintenance works were unnecessary on the test section.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.1C
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• pp.19-27
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• 2011

This paper evaluates the applicability of wave-based nondestructive methodologies and a penetration test for compaction quality measurements during road construction. To evaluate the physical and mechanical properties of compacted subgrade soil layers, soil stiffness gauge (SSG), time domain reflectometry (TDR), and miniature electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) accelerometers were used to nondestructively evaluate the soil response during and after compaction and dynamic cone penetrometer (DCP) profiles were used to evaluate the soil shear strength after compaction was completed. At the field site, two types of soils were compacted with four different compaction equipments and energies. Field testing results indicate that soil parameters evaluated by different testing methods, which are SSG, TDR, MEMS accelerometer, and DCP, are highly correlated. In addition, it is shown that the physical and mechanical tests deployed in this study can be used as alternative methods to the conventional compaction quality evaluation methods when assessing the overall quality and the engineering response of compacted lifts.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.197-216
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• 2016

The increased speed of a train causes increased loads that act on the track substructures. To ensure the safety of the track substructures, proper maintenance and repair are necessary based on an accurate characterization of strength and stiffness. The objective of this study is to develop and apply a cone penetrometer incorporated with the dynamic cone penetration method (CPD) for investigating track substructures. The CPD consists of an outer rod for dynamic penetration in the ballast layer and an inner rod with load cells for static penetration in the subgrade. Additionally, an energy-monitoring module composed of strain gauges and an accelerometer is connected to the head of the outer rod to measure the dynamic responses during the dynamic penetration. Moreover, eight strain gauges are installed in the load cells for static penetration to measure the cone tip resistance and the friction resistance during static penetration. To investigate the applicability of the developed CPD, laboratory and field tests are performed. The results of the CPD tests, i.e., profiles of the corrected dynamic cone penetration index (CDI), profiles of the cone tip and friction resistances, and the friction ratio are obtained at high resolution. Moreover, the maximum shear modulus of the subgrade is estimated using the relationships between the static penetration resistances and the maximum shear modulus obtained from the laboratory tests. This study suggests that the CPD test may be a useful method for the characterization of track substructures.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.141-154
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• 2023

This study investigated the effect of water retention characteristics between aged and fresh Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) on the stability of the landfill. A series of transient numerical modeling for the slope of an MSW landfill was performed considering the variation of water retention characteristics due to leachate circulation. Four different scenarios were considered in this analysis depending on how to obtain hydraulic conductivity and the aging degree of materials. Unsaturated hydraulic properties of the MSW used for the modeling were evaluated through modified hanging column tests. Different water retention properties and various landfill conditions, such as subgrade stiffness, leachate injection frequency, and gas and leachate collection system, were considered to investigate the pore water distribution and slope stability. The stability analyses related to the factor of safety showed that unsaturated properties under those varied conditions significantly impacted the slope stability, where the factor of safety decreased, ranging between 9.4 and 22%. The aged materials resulted in a higher factor of safety than fresh materials; however, after 1000 days, the factor of safety decreased by around 10.6% due to pore pressure buildup. The analysis results indicated that using fresh materials yielded higher factor of safety values. The landfill subgrade was found to have a significant impact on the factor of safety, which resulted in an average of 34% lower factor of safety in soft subgrades. The results also revealed that a failed leachate collection system (e.g., clogging) could result in landfill failure (factor of safety < 1) after around 298 days, while the leachate recirculation frequency has no critical impact on stability. In addition, the accumulation of gas pressure within the waste body resulted in factor of safety reductions as high as 24%. It is essential to consider factors related to the unsaturated hydraulic properties in designing a landfill to prevent landfill instability.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.45-52
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• 2015

To minimize the cost of maintenance, repair and over-design of track substructure, an accurate evaluation of strength and stiffness of the track substructure is necessary. In this study, a cone penetrometer with impact penetration rod (CPI) is developed for the evaluation of track substructure. For applicability test, the chamber and field tests were performed. As the experimental results of the CPI, dynamic cone penetration endex (DCPI), cone tip resistance ($q_c$), friction resistance ($f_s$) and friction ratio (Fr) were obtained. In the chamber test, the experimental results show reasonable values for the simulated track substructure. In the field test, the CPI clearly detects the interface between the ballast and the subgrade. Also, discontinuous layers are detected in the subgrade. It is expected that the developed CPI may be an effective tool for the evaluation of track substructure by evaluating the ballast layer by dynamic penetration and the subgrade by static penetration of the inner rod.

• Journal of Ocean Engineering and Technology
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• v.12 no.3 s.29
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• pp.19-30
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• 1998

In this paper, the dynamic analysis of a dolphin system for mooring a floating structure such as barge mounted plant is studied. The characteristics of the soil-pile system are simplified by a set of equivalent spring elements at the mudline. To evaluate the equivalent spring constants, the finite difference method is used. Since the characteristics of the soil-pile system are nonlinear in case of soft foundation, the nonlinear dynamic analysis technique is needed. The Newmark $beta$ method incorporating the modified Newton-Raphson method(initial stiffness method) is used. A numerical analysis is performed on two mooring dolphin systems on soft foundation and rock foundation. In case of the rock foundation, the characteristics are found to be nearly linear, so the linear dynamic analysis may be sufficient to consider the foundation effect. But in case of soft foundation, the non-linearity of the foundation appears to be very signigicant, so the nonlinear dynamic analysis si needed.

• Steel and Composite Structures
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• v.33 no.2
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• pp.209-224
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• 2019

This paper describes a study of the mapping relationship between the vertical deformation of bridge structures and rail deformation of high-speed railway, taking the interlayer interactions of the bridge subgrade CRTS II ballastless slab track system (HSRBST) into account. The differential equations and natural boundary conditions of the mapping relationship between the vertical deformation of bridge structures and rail deformation were deduced according to the principle of stationary potential energy. Then an analytical model for such relationship was proposed. Both the analytical method proposed in this paper and the finite element numerical method were used to calculate the rail deformations under three typical deformations of bridge structures and the evolution of rail geometry under these circumstances was analyzed. It was shown that numerical and analytical calculation results are well agreed with each other, demonstrating the effectiveness of the analytical model proposed in this paper. The mapping coefficient between bridge structure deformation and rail deformation showed a nonlinear increase with increasing amplitude of the bridge structure deformation. The rail deformation showed an obvious "following feature"; with the increase of bridge span and fastener stiffness, the curve of rail deformation became gentler, the track irregularity wavelength became longer, and the performance of the rail at following the bridge structure deformation was stronger.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.167-185
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• 1999

A series of model tests was performed to find the characteristics of lateral behavior of single rigid pile. This paper shows the results of model tests on the lateral behavior of single rigid driven pile in non-homogeneous(two layered) Nak-Dong River sands. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of the ratio of lower layer thickness to embedded pile length, the coefficient ratio of the subgrade reaction and the pile construction conditions(driven & embedded piles) on the characteristics of lateral behavior of single pile. The results of model tests show that the lateral behavior in non-homogeneous soil depends upon drop energy considerably, that is, in the case of H/L=0.75, as the drop energy increases three times the decrease percentage increases about 2.12 times. In the driven pile with non-homogeneous soil of $E_{h1}/E_{h2}=5.56$, the effect of upper layer with large stiffness on the decrease of lateral deflection is remarkably smaller than embedded pile. In non-homogeneous soil, the maximum bending moment of driven pile is in the range of 100 132% in comparison with embedded pile. The reason is that the stiffness of soil around pile increases with drop vibration and so the pile behavior is similar to the flexible pile behavior by means of the increase of relative stiffness of pile, In this paper, the experimental equations for lateral load and H/L on $y_D/y_E \; & \; MBM_D/MBM_E$ are suggested from model tests.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.19 no.6
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• pp.261-271
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• 2003

A condition evaluation procedure for the pavement foundations using multi-load level Falling Weight Deflectometer(FWD) deflections is presented in this paper. A dynamic finite element program incorporating a stress-dependent material model, was used to generate the synthetic deflection database. Based on this synthetic database, the relationships between surface deflections and critical responses, such as stresses and strains in base and subgrade layers, have been established. FWD deflection data, Dynamic Cone Penetrometer(UP) data, and repeated load resilient modulus testing results used in developing this procedure were collected from the Long Term Pavement Performance (LTPP) and North Carolina Department of Transportation (NCDOT) database. Research effort focused on investigation of the effect of the FWD load level on the condition evaluation procedures. The results indicate that the proposed procedure can estimate the pavement foundation conditions. It is also found that structurally adjusted Base Damage Index (BDI) and Base Curvature Index (BCI) are good indicators for the prediction of stiffness characteristics of aggregate base and subgrade respectively. A FWD test with a load of 66.7 kN or less does not improve the accuracy of this procedure. Results from the study for the nonlinear behavior of a pavement foundations indicate that the deflection ratio obtained from multi-load level deflections can predict the type and quality of the pavement foundation materials.