• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.23 no.10
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• pp.47-56
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• 2007

In this research, the effects of the gravel content on the liquefaction behavior for both of the isotropically and $K_0-anisotropically$ consolidated gravel-sand mixtures are investigated. for this purpose, the cyclic triaxial tests for the specimens with the same relative density (Dr=40%) and variations of gravel content were performed. On the other hand, a series of undrained cyclic triaxial tests were carried out on the isotropically consolidated gravel-sand mixtures with the same void ratio (e=0.7) and from 0% to 30% gravel contents. Void ratios of gravel-sand mixtures with the same relative density (Dr=40%) are found to decrease significantly with the increase of the gravel content from 0% to about 70% and increase thereafter. But the void ratio of the sand matrix among the gravel skeleton increases with the increase of the gravel contents. Test results are as follows : for the isotropically consolidated specimen with 40% of relative density and low gavel contents (GC=0%, 20%, 40%), pore water pressure development and axial strain behavior during undrained cyclic loading show similar behavior to those of the loose sand because of high void ratio, and the specimens with high gravel content (70%) both pore pressure and strata behaviors are similar to those of dense sand. And the isotropically consolidated specimens with the same void ratio (e=0.7) and higher gravel contents show the same behavior of pore water pressure and axial strain as that of the loose sand, but for the lower gravel content this behavior shows similar behavior to that of dense sand. The liquefaction strength of the isotropically consolidated specimens with the same relative density increases with gravel content up to 70%, and the strength decreases with the increase of the gravel content at the same void ratio. Thus, it is confirmed that the liquefaction strength of the gravel-sand mixtures depends both on relative density and void ratio of the whole mixture rather than the relative density of the sand matrix filled among gravels. On the other hand, the behavior of pore water pressure and axial strain for the $K_0-anisotropically$ consolidated gravel-sand mixtures shows almost the same cyclic behavior of the sand with no stress reversal even with some stress reversal of the cyclic loading. Namely, even the stress reversal of about 10% of cyclic stress amplitude, the permanent strain with small cyclic strain increases rapidly with the number of cycles, and the initial liquefaction does not occur always with less than maximum pore water pressure ratio of 1.0. The liquefaction resistance increases with the gravel contents between 0% and 40%, but tends to decrease beyond 40% of gravel content. In conclusion, the cyclic behavior of gravel-sand mixtures depends on factors such as gravel content, void ratio, relative density and consolidation condition.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Geosynthetics Society
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• v.11 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2012

If the railways consisting of soil subgrade is applied to repetitive loading, elastic deformation and plastic deformation will occur at the same time. So the repeat traffic loading condition should be considered to predict the long-term deformation on railway roadbed. In this study, laboratory data from the repeated load triaxial tests and cylinder model test were used to predict accumulated settlement on railway foundation and results were analyed based on the nonliear models and stress state considered. It has proposed predict model using power function model on plastic settlement of roadbed materials.

• 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.

• 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.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Railway
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• v.17 no.1
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• pp.52-58
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• 2014

Plastic deformation of roadbed influences the stability and maintenance of concrete slab track. Long-term plastic deformation in a railway roadbed is generated primarily due to accumulated inelastic strains caused by repeated passing of trains. Prediction of cumulative plastic deformation is important in cost-effective maintenance of railway tracks as well as for the safe operation of trains. In this study, the vertical displacements in railway roadbeds with different thicknesses of reinforced roadbed were computed. Parameters of the power model for cumulative plastic strain were calibrated by using the data from triaxial tests and full-scale loading tests. Results of three-dimensional finite element analyses of standard roadbed sections provide us with design guidelines for the selection of the thickness of reinforced roadbed.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.36 no.9
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• pp.5-20
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• 2020

In 2017, after the Pohang earthquake, liquefaction phenomena were firstly observed after the observation of domestic earthquake by epicenter. In this study, various in-situ tests and laboratory tests were performed to determine the dynamic properties in (1) Songlim Park, (2) Heunghae-eup, Mangcheon-ri and (3) Heungan-ri, Pohang. As a site investigation, the standard penetration test (SPT), cone penetration test (CPT), multichannel analysis of surface wave (MASW), density logging, downhole test, and electrical resistivity survey were performed. In addition, cyclic triaxial test against sampled sand from site was also conducted. Based on the result, high ground water level and loose sand layer in shallow depth were observed for all sites. In addition, liquefaction resistance ratio of soil sampled from Songlim park was lower than those of Jumunjin sand, Toyoura sand, and Ottawa sand.

• 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.14 no.7
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• pp.51-56
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• 2013

Recently, a top record of hourly-based rainfall has been changed annually and flood damages of road have increased. To solve this problem, pavements for drainage were developed and practically constructed but there was no considerations on sub-base. In this research, we proposed standard for distribution of particle size of sub-base to consider strength characteristic and drainage property. We focused to compare coefficients strength and permeability by laboratory tests. Prior to tests, 4 samples were selected under the consideration on the international or domestic design guideline. In the tests, strength characteristics were compared with resilient modulus. Also, permeability characteristics were compared with coefficient of upward and downward permeability. Resilient modulus was determined with MR test using cyclic triaxial testing system. Two permeability tests were carried out. One is variable head permeability test for downward drainage and the other is Rowe Cell test for upward drainage. In the case of Rowe Cell test, middle-sized sampler with 150mm diameter was used for this study. Consequentially, we tried to find the optimum distribution of particle size to satisfy both of strength and permeability characteristics for sub-base.

• 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.