• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.3 no.1
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• pp.9-34
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• 2013

Submarine pipelines encounter significant wave forces in shallow coastal waters due to the action of waves. In order to reduce such forces (also to protect the pipe against anchors and dropped objects) they are buried below the seabed. The wave force variation due to burial depends on the engineering characteristics of the sub soil like hydraulic conductivity and porosity, apart from the design environmental conditions. For a given wave condition, in certain type of soil, the wave force can reduce drastically with increased burial and in certain other type of soil, it may not. It is hence essential to understand how the wave forces vary in soils of different hydraulic conductivity. Based on physical model study, the wave forces on the buried pipeline model is assessed for a wide range of wave conditions, for different burial depths and for four types of cohesion-less soils, covering hydraulic conductivity in the range of 0.286 to 1.84 mm/s. It is found that for all the four soil types, the horizontal wave force reduces with increase in depth of burial, whereas the vertical force is high for half buried condition. Among the soils, well graded one is better for half buried case, since the least vertical force is experienced for this situation. It is found that uniformly graded and low hydraulic conductivity soil attracts the maximum vertical force for half buried case. A case study analysis is carried out and is reported. The results of this study are useful for submarine buried pipeline design.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.67 no.2
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• pp.105-113
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• 2018

To improve the prediction accuracy of the strong-unloading rock slope performance and obtain the range of variation in the slope displacement, a new displacement time-series prediction model is proposed, called the fuzzy information granulation (FIG)-genetic algorithm (GA)-back propagation neural network (BPNN) model. Initially, a displacement time series is selected as the training samples of the prediction model on the basis of an analysis of the causes of the change in the slope behavior. Then, FIG is executed to partition the series and obtain the characteristic parameters of every partition. Furthermore, the later characteristic parameters are predicted by inputting the earlier characteristic parameters into the GA-BPNN model, where a GA is used to optimize the initial weights and thresholds of the BPNN; in the process, the numbers of input layer nodes, hidden layer nodes, and output layer nodes are determined by a trial method. Finally, the prediction model is evaluated by comparing the measured and predicted values. The model is applied to predict the displacement time series of a strong-unloading rock slope in a hydropower station. The engineering case shows that the FIG-GA-BPNN model can obtain more accurate predicted results and has high engineering application value.

• Membrane and Water Treatment
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• v.10 no.4
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• pp.307-311
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• 2019

The ejector type microbubble generator, which is the method to supply air to water by using cavitation in the nozzle, does not require any air supplier so it is an effective and economical. Also, the distribution of the size of bubbles is diverse. Especially, the size of bubbles is smaller than the bubbles from a conventional air diffuser and bigger than the bubbles from a pressurized dissolution type microbubble generator so it could be applied to the aeration tank for wastewater treatment. However, the performance of the ejector type microbubble generator was affected by hydraulic pressure and MLSS(Mixed Liquor Suspended Solid) concentration so many factors should be considered to apply the generator to aeration tank. Therefore, this study was performed to verify effects of hydraulic pressure and MLSS concentration on oxygen transfer of the ejector type microbubble generator. In the tests, the quantity of sucked air in the nozzle, dissolved oxygen(DO) concentration, oxygen uptake rate(OUR), oxygen transfer coefficient were measured and calculated by using experimental results. In case of the MLSS, the experiments were performed in the condition of MLSS concentration of 0, 2,000, 4,000, 8,000 mg/L. The hydraulic pressure was considered up to $2.0mH_2O$. In the results of experiments, oxygen transfer coefficient was decreased with the increase of MLSS concentration and hydraulic pressure due to the increased viscosity and density of wastewater and decreased air flow rate. Also, by using statistical analysis, when the ejector type microbubble generator was used to supply air to wasterwater, the model equation of DO concentration was suggested to predict DO concentration in wastewater.

• Smart Structures and Systems
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• v.29 no.1
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• pp.129-140
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• 2022

The effectiveness of system identification, damage detection, condition assessment and other structural analyses relies heavily on the accuracy and reliability of the measured data in structural health monitoring (SHM) systems. However, data anomalies often occur in SHM systems, leading to inaccurate and untrustworthy analysis results. Therefore, anomalies in the raw data should be detected and cleansed before further analysis. Previous studies on data anomaly detection mainly focused on just single type of data anomaly for denoising or removing outliers, meanwhile, the existing methods of detecting multiple data anomalies are usually time consuming. For these reasons, recognising multiple anomaly patterns for real-time alarm and analysis in field monitoring remains a challenge. Aiming to achieve an efficient and accurate detection for multi-type data anomalies for field SHM, this study proposes a pattern-recognition-based data anomaly detection method that mainly consists of three steps: the feature extraction from the long time-series data samples, the training of a pattern recognition neural network (PRNN) using the features and finally the detection of data anomalies. The feature extraction step remarkably reduces the time cost of the network training, making the detection process very fast. The performance of the proposed method is verified on the basis of the SHM data of two practical long-span bridges. Results indicate that the proposed method recognises multiple data anomalies with very high accuracy and low calculation cost, demonstrating its applicability in field monitoring.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.423-432
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• 2020

Hydraulic conductivity is one of the engineering properties of soil. This study focusses on the influence of cement content on the hydraulic conductivity of cemented sand, which is investigated based on the results from numerical analysis and laboratory testing. For numerical analysis the cemented samples were scanned using X-ray Computed Tomography (CT) while laboratory testing was carried out using a triaxial setup. Numerical analysis enables us to simulate flow through the sample and provides insight to the microstructure. It quantifies the pore volume, proportion of interconnected voids and pore size distribution in both cemented and uncemented samples, which could be computed only through empirical equations in case of laboratory testing. With reduction in global voids, the interconnecting voids within the samples also reduce with cement content. Gamma cumulative distribution function is used to predict the percentage of voids lesser than a given pore volume. Finally, the results obtained from both numerical analysis and laboratory testing are compared.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.9 no.4
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• pp.483-498
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• 2015

This article describes a new in-situ load test called the Hydraulic Cylinder Test (HCT) and its application to determine the geotechnical properties of soil-rock mixtures. The main advantages of the test are its easy implementation, speed of execution and low-cost. This article provides a detailed description of the equipment and the test procedure, and examines a case study of its application to determine the geotechnical properties of an earth-filled dam for a tailings pond. The containment dams of the ponds are made from blocks of gypsum and marl, obtained from the excavation of the ponds, mixed in a matrix of sands and clays. The size of the rocks varies between 1 and 30 cm. The HCT is particularly useful for determining the geotechnical properties of this type of soil-rock mixture. Nine HCTs were carried out to determine its strength (c, ${\phi}$) and deformation (B, G) properties. The results obtained were validated using the Bim strength criterion, recently proposed, and some pressure meter tests carried out beforehand. The properties obtained are used to analyze the stability of the dam using computer simulations and a modification to its design is proposed.

• Ocean Systems Engineering
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• v.5 no.4
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• pp.279-299
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• 2015

Suction anchors are widely adopted and play an important role in mooring systems. However, how to reliably predict the failure mode and ultimate pullout capacity of the anchor in sand, especially by an easy-to-use theoretical method, is still a great challenge. Existing methods for predicting the inclined pullout capacity of suction anchors in sand are mainly based on experiments or finite element analysis. In the present work, based on a rational mechanical model for suction anchors and the failure mechanism of the anchor in the seabed, an analytical model is developed which can predict the failure mode and ultimate pullout capacity of suction anchors in sand under inclined loading. Detailed parametric analysis is performed to explore the effects of different parameters on the failure mode and ultimate pullout capacity of the anchor. To examine the present model, the results from experiments and finite element analysis are employed to compare with the theoretical predictions, and a general agreement is obtained. An analytical method that can evaluate the optimal position of the attachment point is also proposed in the present study. The present work demonstrates that the failure mode and pullout capacity of suction anchors in sand can be easily and reasonably predicted by the theoretical model, which might be a useful supplement to the experimental and numerical methods in analyzing the behavior of suction anchors.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.391-414
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• 2015

In this paper, stabilities of a plane slide rock slope under different hydraulic distributions were studied based on the nonlinear Barton-Bandis (B-B) failure criterion. The influence of various parameters on the stability of rock slopes was analyzed. Parametric analysis indicated that studying the factor of safety (FS) of planar slide rock slopes using the B-B failure criterion is both simple and effective and that the effects of the basic friction angle of the joint (${\varphi}_b$), the joint roughness coefficient (JRC), and the joint compressive strength (JCS) on the FS of a planar slide rock slope are significant. Qualitatively, the influence of the JCS on the FS of a slope is small, whereas the influences of the ${\varphi}_b$ and the JRC are significant. The FS of the rock slope decreases as the water in a tension crack becomes deeper. This trend is more significant when the flow outlet is blocked, a situation that is particularly prevalent in regions with permafrost or seasonal frozen soil. Finally, the work is extended to study the reliability of the slope against plane failure according to the uncertainty from physical and mechanics parameters.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.1207-1217
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• 2018

Geomechanics parameters are critical to numerical simulation, stability analysis, design and construction of geotechnical engineering. Due to the limitations of laboratory and in situ experiments, back analysis is widely used in geomechancis and geotechnical engineering. In this study, a hybrid back analysis method, that coupling numerical simulation, response surface (RS) and relevance vector machine (RVM), was proposed and applied to identify geomechanics parameters from hydraulic fracturing. RVM was adapted to approximate complex functional relationships between geomechanics parameters and borehole pressure through coupling with response surface method and numerical method. Artificial bee colony (ABC) algorithm was used to search the geomechanics parameters as optimal method in back analysis. The proposed method was verified by a numerical example. Based on the geomechanics parameters identified by hybrid back analysis, the computed borehole pressure agreed closely with the monitored borehole pressure. It showed that RVM presented well the relationship between geomechanics parameters and borehole pressure, and the proposed method can characterized the geomechanics parameters reasonably. Further, the parameters of hybrid back analysis were analyzed and discussed. It showed that the hybrid back analysis is feasible, effective, robust and has a good global searching performance. The proposed method provides a significant way to identify geomechanics parameters from hydraulic fracturing.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.22 no.6
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• pp.519-528
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• 2020

A mathematical wetting model is usually used to predict the deformation of core wall rockfill dams induced by the wetting effect. In this paper, a series of wetting triaxial tests on a rockfill was conducted using a large-sized triaxial apparatus, and the wetting deformation behavior of the rockfill was studied. The wetting strains were found to be related to the confining pressure and shear stress levels, and two empirical equations, which are regarded as the proposed mathematical wetting model, were proposed to express these properties. The stress and deformation of a core wall rockfill dam was studied by using finite element analysis and the proposed wetting model. On the one hand, the simulations of the wetting model can estimate well the observed wetting strains of the upstream rockfill of the dam, which demonstrated that the proposed wetting model is applicable to express the wetting deformation behavior of the rockfill specimen. On the other hand, the simulated additional deformation of the dam induced by the wetting effect is thought to be reasonable according to practical engineering experience, which indicates the potential of the model in dam engineering.