• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.434-443
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• 2009

Slope stability analysis is an essential part of rock slope design. For highly fractured rock, the limit equilibrium method (LEM) based slope stability analysis with a circular failure surface is often carried out assuming the rock mass behaves more or less as a continuum. This paper examines first, the applicability of the finite-element method (FEM) based shear strength reduction (SSR) technique for highly fractured rock slope, and second the use of Mohr-Coulomb (MC) failure criterion in conjunction with generalized Hoek-Brown (HB) failure criterion. The numerical results on a number of cases are compared in terms of the factor of safety (FS). The results indicated that the FEM-based SSR technique yields almost the same FSs from LEM, and that the MC and HB failure criteria yield almost identical FSs when the strength parameters for MC failure criterion are obtained based on the modified HB failure criterion if and only if value of the Hoek-Brown constant $m_i$ is smaller than 10 and slope angle is smaller than 1:1, otherwise MC failure criteria over-estimate the factor of safety.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.136-145
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• 2009

Factors influencing shear behavior of granular material include particle size, shape, distribution, relative density, particle crushing, etc. In this study, these factors are characterized by viewpoint of shear behavior using numerical analysis based on DEM. Geometrical particle shape is represented by a combination of small circular particles and influence of particle shape on crushing is studied through relative comparisons between clump (uncrushable) and cluster (crushable) models which are modeled using DEM. Also, particle shape is quantified by the dimensionless parameters such as circularity and convexity. The results indicate that particle shape indexes have a negative association with internal friction angle. Also, internal friction angle becomes reduced and failure envelop curve becomes nonlinear due to the particle crushing. It is also found that numerical results are quite good agreement with the experimental test conducted in this study.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.03a
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• pp.888-895
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• 2009

Compaction is a process of increasing soil density using physical energy. It is intended to improve the strength and stiffness of soil. In embankment, degree of compaction affects the construction time, money, also method of soil improvement. In large scale embankment project, difficulties of embankment should change due to uncertainty of settlement. So it is very important to predict the final settlement and factor of safety induced by embankment. In many construction site, there are primarily design of high embankment using in-situ soil. Therefore numerical analyses are necessary for valid evaluation of the settlement prediction. But due to the construction cost and schedule, there were lacking in properties of soil and also limited number of in-situ test were performed. So we proposed the method that can easily estimate the proper soil parameters and suggest the proper method of numerical analysis. From this, two-dimensional finite-difference numerical analysis was conducted to investigate the settlement and factor of safety induced by embankment with various case of compaction rate and embankment height.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 1998.05a
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• pp.83-114
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• 1998

The most widely accepted method for understanding the deformation mechanism of rock is from the use of computer simulation. However, if the changes in rock properties after excavation are significant this will prevent the computer simulation kent predicting the deformation with acceptable accuracy. If the deformations are, however, carefully measured in situ, the resulting data can be more useful far predicting the deformational behavior of underground openings, since the effect of the parameters which influence the deformational behavior are included in the measurement. In this study, extensive data analyses were carried out using the deformation measurements from the Waste Isolation Pilot Plant (WIPP), which is a permanent nuclear waste repository The results from computer simulations were compared with field measurements to evaluate the assumptions used in the computer simulations, For better description of the deformational behavior around underground excavations, several techniques were developed, namely: (a) the calculation of the zero strain boundary; (b) the evaluation of the influence of adjacent excavations on the deformational behavior of pre-excavated openings; (c) the description of the deformational behavior using in situ measurements; (d) the calculation of the shear stress distribution; and (e) the application of a Neural Network for the prediction of opening deformation.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.10 no.3
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• pp.325-334
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• 2016

Rock salt is a near-perfect material for gas storage repositories due to its excellent ductility and low permeability. Gas storage in rock salt layers during gas injection and gas production causes the stress redistribution surrounding the cavity. The triaxial cyclic loading and unloading tests for rock salt were performed in this paper. The elastic-plastic deformation behaviour of rock salt under cyclic loading was observed. Rock salt experienced strain hardening during the initial loading, and the irreversible deformation was large under low stress station, meanwhile the residual stress became larger along with the increase of deviatoric stress. Confining pressure had a significant effect on the unloading modulus for the variation of mechanical parameters. Based on the theory of elastic-plastic damage mechanics, the evolution of damage during cyclic loading and unloading under various confining pressure was described.

• International Journal of Railway
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.35-39
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• 2014

Urban subways are one of the main parts of urban transportation networks in every city that always requires much attention in order to improve its efficiency in aspects of safety, reliability speed and costs. As the viewpoint of costs, an accurate design, especially design of vertical alignment, can have a dominant role to reduce the costs of urban railway projects. This paper seeks to evaluate the advantages and disadvantages of designing chain vertical alignment for urban subways in compare to flat vertical alignment. To achieve this goal, line A of Qom subway in Iran was selected as a case study in this research. Five parameters considered in the technical-economical evaluation: (1) energy consumption, (2) rolling stock, (3) operation, (4) civil works and geotechnical and (5) hydrological, drainage and pumping. According to the results, a power saving of about 40% have been estimated in the chain vertical alignment for the train without regenerative braking in compare with the flat vertical alignment, although the power saving was calculated less than 10% for the train with regenerative braking. Finally it was found that due to the modern rolling stock technology, the chain vertical alignment represents fewer advantages in compare to the past years.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2009.09a
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• pp.1338-1345
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• 2009

Although rock excavation is necessary for the effective utilization of urban space, most conventional rock excavation methods, including the blasting method, cause high noise and vibration. Meanwhile, if a high pressure waterjet system is applied to excavate underground spaces in urban areas, the public grievance can be reduced by low noise and vibration. In this study, an abrasive waterjet system is designed and developed to study the influence of various performance parameters such as jet pressure, nozzle traverse speed, stand-off distance, or abrasive feed rate on waterjet excavation performance in laboratory. Using the developed waterjet system, rock drilling characteristics are identified by measuring drilling depths as a function of the jet exposure time. The drilling depth linearly increases with increasing the jet exposure time(under 60sec). Rock cutting characteristics are also obtained with various jet pressures(1600~3200kg/$cm^2$) and nozzle traverse speeds(1.9~14.1mm/s): The cutting depth is nonlinearly related to the jet pressure and traverse speed. Indeed, the cutting depth increases with an increase in the jet pressure and a decrease in the nozzle traverse speed. This trend can be explained by energy transferring/loss mechanism.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.20 no.3
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• pp.243-254
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• 2020

Due to the permanent damage to structures during earthquakes, soil liquefaction is an important issue in geotechnical earthquake engineering that needs to be investigated. Typical examples of soil liquefaction have been observed in many earthquakes, particularly in Alaska, Niigata (1964), San Fernando (1971), Loma Prieta (1989), Kobe (1995) and Izmit (1999) earthquakes. In this study, liquefaction behavior of uniform sands of different grain sizes was investigated by using the energy-based method. For this purpose, a total of 36 deformation-controlled tests were conducted on water-saturated samples in undrained conditions by using the cyclic simple shear test method and considering the relative density, effective stress and mean grain size parameters that affect the cumulative liquefaction energy. The results showed that as the mean grain size decreases, the liquefaction potential of the sand increases. In addition, with increasing effective stress and relative density, the resistance of sand against liquefaction decreases. Multiple regression analysis was performed on the test results and separate correlations were proposed for the samples with mean grain size of 0.11-0.26 mm and for the ones with 0.45-0.85 mm. The recommended relationships were compared to the ones existing in the literature and compatible results were obtained.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.21 no.2
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• pp.153-164
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• 2020

Tunnel excavation in shallow soft ground conditions of urban areas experiences inevitable surface settlements that threaten the stability of nearby infrastructures. Surface settlements during shield TBM tunneling are related to a number of factors including geotechnical conditions, tunnel geometry and excavation methods. In this paper, a database collected from a construction section of Hong Kong subway was used to analyze the correlation of settlement-inducing factors and surface settlements monitored at different locations of a transverse trough. The Pearson correlation analysis result revealed a correlation between the factors in consideration. Factors such as the face pressure, advance speed, thrust force, cutter torque, twin tunnel distance and ground water level presented a modest correlation with the surface settlement, while no significant trends between the other factors and the surface settlements were observed. It can be concluded that an integrated effect of the settlement-inducing factors should be related to the magnitude of surface settlements.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.26 no.3
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• pp.263-275
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• 2020

This research is dedicated to slope stability analysis using novel intelligent models. By coupling a neural network with spotted hyena optimizer (SHO), salp swarm algorithm (SSA), shuffled frog leaping algorithm (SFLA), and league champion optimization algorithm (LCA) metaheuristic algorithms, four predictive ensembles are built for predicting the factor of safety (FOS) of a single-layer cohesive soil slope. The data used to develop the ensembles are provided from a vast finite element analysis. After creating the proposed models, it was observed that the best population size for the SHO, SSA, SFLA, and LCA is 300, 400, 400, and 200, respectively. Evaluation of the results showed that the combination of metaheuristic and neural approaches offers capable tools for estimating the FOS. However, the SSA (error = 0.3532 and correlation = 0.9937), emerged as the most reliable optimizer, followed by LCA (error = 0.5430 and correlation = 0.9843), SFLA (error = 0.8176 and correlation = 0.9645), and SHO (error = 2.0887 and correlation = 0.8614). Due to the high accuracy of the SSA in properly adjusting the computational parameters of the neural network, the corresponding FOS predictive formula is presented to be used as a fast yet accurate substitution for traditional methods.