• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.12 no.4
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• pp.707-721
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• 2017

The objective of this paper is to experimentally study the consolidation of saturated silty clay subjected to repeated heating-cooling cycles using a modified temperature-controlled triaxial apparatus. Focus is placed on the influence of the water content, confining pressure, and magnitudes and number of thermal loading cycles. The experimental results show that the thermally induced pore pressure increases with increasing water content and magnitude of thermal loading in undrained conditions. After isothermal consolidation at an elevated temperature, the pore pressure continues to decrease and gradually falls below zero during undrained cooling, and the maximum negative pore pressure increases as the water content decreases or the magnitude of thermal loading increases. During isothermal consolidation at ambient temperature after one heating-cooling cycle, the pore pressure begins to rise due to water absorption and finally stabilizes at approximately zero. As the number of thermal loading cycles increases, the thermally induced pore pressure shows a degrading trend, which seems to be more apparent under a higher confining pressure. Overall, the specimens tested show an obvious volume reduction at the completion of a series of heating-cooling cycles, indicating a notable irreversible thermal consolidation deformation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.729-742
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• 2015

The aim of the present work was the study of instability in a loose sand from Les Dunes beach in Ain Beninan, Algeria, where the Boumerdes earthquake occurred in 2003. This earthquake caused significant structural damages and claimed the lives of many people. Damages caused to infrastructures were strongly related to phenomena of liquefaction. The study was based on the results of two drained and six undrained triaxial tests over a local sand collected in a region where liquefaction occurred. All the tests hereby analyzed followed compression stress-paths in monotonic conditions and the specimens were isotropically consolidated, since the objective was to study the instability due to static loading as part of a more general project, which also included cyclic studies. The instability was modeled with the second-order work increment criterion. The definition of the instability line for Les Dunes sand and its relation with yield surfaces allowed the identification of the region of potential instability and helped in the evaluation of the susceptibility of soils to liquefy under undrained conditions and its modeling. The dilatancy rate was studied in the points where instability began. Some mixed tests were also simulated, starting with drained conditions and then changing to undrained conditions at different time steps.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.31 no.3C
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• pp.93-102
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• 2011

Most experimental studies on soil liquefaction are related to clean sands. However, soils in the field or reclaimed grounds commonly contain some amounts of silt and clay rather than clean sand only. Many researchers investigated the effect of fine contents on liquefaction resistance and mainly used non-plastic fines such as silts. In this study, 10% of plastic fines with various plasticity index (PI) such as 8, 18, 50, and 377 were mixed with wet Nakdong River sand and then loose, medium, and dense specimens were prepared by undercompaction method. A series of undrained cyclic triaxial tests were carried out by applying three different cyclic stress ratios. As a result, the liquefaction resistance tended to decrease as a PI of fines in the specimens with equal fine content increased. On the other hand, the difference between loose specimens with low and high plasticity fines was not clearly observed in terms of liquefaction resistance. However, in the case of dense specimens, liquefaction resistance decreased up to 40% as a plasticity of fines increased.

• Journal of the Korean GEO-environmental Society
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• v.11 no.11
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• pp.55-62
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• 2010

The settlements by liquefaction seldom occur uniformly because of soil homogeneity, however differential settlements are major cause of the damages to structures. From the past researches, author paid attention to the fact that stress history during undrained cyclic shear process affects greatly on the volumetric strains of the post-liquefaction. Therefore, the effect of the residual shear strain in cyclic shear process was examined in this study. The experiment apparatus based on strain control with volumetric strain control device was used for the study to investigate the effect of the residual strain on the relationship between volumetric strain and effective stress of clean and granite sandy soil. It could be seen an insignificant difference in the volumetric strain after liquefaction under various residual shear strain conditions in the case of clean sand. On the other hand, in granite sandy soil, the volumetric strain after liquefaction was small when the lower level of the residual shear strain was applied. And, the residual shear strain during cyclic shear affected the shape of the relation curve between effective stress and volumetric strain as well.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.8
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• pp.147-158
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• 2004

Laboratory dynamic tests are carried out to assess the liquefaction potential of saturated sands in most countries. However, simple results such as the maximum cyclic shear stress and the number of cycles at initial liquefaction are used in the experimental assessment of liquefaction potential, even though various results can be obtained from the dynamic test. In addition, it seemed to be inefficient because more than three dynamic tests with different stress ratio have to be carried out to draw a liquefaction resistance experimental curve. To improve the present assessment method fur liquefaction potential, a new critical resistible characteristic far soil liquefaction is proposed and verified through conventional cyclic triaxial tests with Jumunjin sand. In the proposed method, various experimental data such as effective stress path, stress-strain relationship, and the change of excess pore water pressure can be used in the determination of cumulative plastic shear strains at every 1/4 cycle. Especially, the critical cumulative plastic shear strain to initiate liquefaction can be defined in a specific point called a phase change point in the effective stress path and it can be calculated from a hysteric curve of stress-strain relationship up to this point. Through this research, it is found that the proposed cumulative plastic shear strain can express the dissipated energy to resist dynamic loads and consider the realistic soil dynamic behavior of saturated sands reasonably. It is also found that the critical plastic shear strain can be used as a registible index of soils to represent the critical soil dynamic state, because it seems to include no effect of large deformation.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.20 no.1
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• pp.85-98
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• 2017

In general, under the repetitive dynamic load generated by rail cars running on the track, subgrade soil experiences changes of stress conditions such as deviatoric stress (${\sigma}_d$) and bulk stress (${\theta}$). Due to the repetitive change of deviatoric stress (${\sigma}_d$) with number of loadings, the resilient modulus ($M_R$) can be obtained by using the measured resilient strain (${\varepsilon}_r$) after a sufficient number of loadings. At present, no plausible and unified test method has been proposed to obtain the resilient modulus of railway track subgrade soil. In this study, a possible test method for obtaining the resilient modulus ($M_R$) of railway track subgrade soil is proposed; this test, by utilizing repetitive triaxial compression testing, can consider all the important parameters, such as the confining stress, deviatoric stress, and number of loadings. By adapting and using the proposed test method to obtain $M_R$, $M_R$ values for compacted track subgrade soil can be successfully determined using soil obtained in three field sites of railway track construction with changing water content range from OMC. In addition, shear modulus (G) ~ shear strain (${\gamma}$) relation data were also obtained using a mid-size RC test. A correlation analysis was performed using the obtained G and $M_R$ values while considering the strain levels and modes of strain direction.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.20 no.7
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• pp.127-140
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• 2004

Conventional methods for the assessment of liquefaction potential were primarily for areas of severe earthquake zones (M=7.5) such as North America and Japan. Detailed earthquake related researches in Korea started in 1997, including development of the seismic design standards for port and harbour structures, which was later completed in 1999. Because most contents in the guidelines were quoted through literature reviews from North America and Japan, which are located in strong earthquake region, those are not proper in Korea, a moderate earthquake region. This requires further improvement of the present guidelines. Considering earthquake hazard data in Korea, use of laboratory tests based on irregular earthquake motion appears to be effective to reflect the dynamic characteristics of soil more realistically than those using simplified regular loading. In this study, cyclic triaxial tests using irregular earthquake motions are performed with different earthquake magnitudes, relative densities, and fines contents. Assessment of liquefaction potential in moderate earthquake regions is discussed based on various laboratory test results. Effects of these components on dynamic behavior of soils are discussed as well. From the test results, screening limits and magnitude scaling factors to determine the soil liquefaction resistance strength in seismic design were re-investigated and proposed using normalized maximum stress ratios under real irregular earthquake motions.

• Earthquakes and Structures
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• v.26 no.2
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• pp.97-115
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• 2024

In this paper, a database consisting of the dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio test data of clay obtained from 406 groups of triaxial tests is constructed with the starting area of Xiong'an New Area as the research background. The aim is to study the nonlinear dynamic properties of clay in this area under cyclic loading. The study found that the effective confining pressure and plasticity index have certain influences on the dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio of clay in this area. Through data analysis, it was found that there was a certain correlation between effective confining pressure and plasticity index and dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio, with fitting degree values greater than 0.1263 for both. However, other physical indices such as the void ratio, natural density, water content and specific gravity have only a small effect on the dynamic shear modulus ratio and the damping ratio, with fitting degree values of less than 0.1 for all of them. This indicates that it is important to consider the influence of effective confining pressure and plasticity index when studying the nonlinear dynamic properties of clays in this area. Based on the above, prediction models for the dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio in this area were constructed separately. The results showed that the model that considered the combined effect of effective confining pressure and plasticity index performed best. The predicted dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio closely matched the actual curves, with approximately 88% of the data falling within ±1.3 times the measured dynamic shear modulus ratio and approximately 85.1% of the data falling within ±1.3 times the measured damping ratio. In contrast, the prediction models that considered only a single influence deviated from the actual values, particularly the model that considered only the plasticity index, which predicted the dynamic shear modulus ratio and the damping ratio within a small distribution range close to the average of the test values. When compared with existing prediction models, it was found that the predicted dynamic shear modulus ratio in this paper was slightly higher, which was due to the overall hardness of the clay in this area, leading to a slightly higher determination of the dynamic shear modulus ratio by the prediction model. Finally, for the dynamic shear modulus ratio and damping ratio of the engineering site in the starting area of Xiong'an New Area, we confirm that the prediction formulas established in this paper have high reliability and provide the applicable range of the prediction model.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.37 no.8
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• pp.5-13
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• 2021

Liquefaction behaviors of two natural silty samples containing fines including clay of 50% or more (Sample No.1 was silt 44.1% and clay 8.8%, sample No.2 was silt 57.2% and clay 12.4%) were examined by a cyclic triaxial test. According to the results on samples containing 50% or more of fine particles, an increase in the fine content decreases the liquefaction resistance of the sample. In other words, when the fine content increases, the liquefaction state of sample is reached with a small number of cyclic loads. In the relationship between the excess pore water pressure ratio and the number of cycles, the slope of the excess pore water pressure ratio increases more steeply as the fine content increases. As a result of analyzing the liquefaction behavior of the two silts with the content of clay contained in the fines, liquefaction occurred more easily in the No.2 silt with high clay content. This result shows that the clay contained in the fines affects the liquefaction behavior of the silt.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.6
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• pp.811-819
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• 2019

Since the Gyeongju earthquake in 2016 and the Pohang earthquake in 2017, the performance of various dynamic tests for seismic design has increased in Korea. However, sinusoidal load has been continuously used in the conventional laboratory tests to evaluate liquefaction potential and determine input-parameters in the numerical analysis. However, recent research results suggest that it is difficult to accurately simulate excess pore water changes of the ground under earthquake loads. In order to solve this problem, this study proposes a combined sinusoidal loading and examines its applicability to the cyclic shear and triaxial test. Also, its validity is examined through performing of shaking-table test and numerical analysis based on the effective stress model. As a result, it was found that the proposed combined sinusoidal loading can more accurately simulate the change of excess pore water pressure in saturated soils under real earthquake load than the sinusoidal load.