• Journal of Korean Tunnelling and Underground Space Association
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• v.5 no.2
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• pp.147-159
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• 2003

Since early in the 90's, as the need for construction of underground rock structures has been largely increased, the in-situ rock stress measurement has been widely carried out to provide the quantitative information on the initial stress state of test site at the design stage of underground rock structures. Among the diverse method developed for measuring rock stress, hydraulic fracturing method is most popularly used because it is applicable at pre-construction stage and has no limit in testing depth. In this paper a study on initial rock stress state at shallow depth of the plain gneiss region in the central part of Seoul was performed on the basis of the in-situ hydraulic fracturing stress measurement results from the 11 test boreholes. And overall characteristics of the initial stress field of the study area are discussed.

• 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.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.18 no.6
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• pp.38-47
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• 2013

This study was performed to identify the optimal operating conditions and to evaluate the xylene removal efficiency, applying in-situ soil flushing with the low concentrated solution of 'Tween 80' at the xylene contaminated site. The pilot scale test site ($5m{\times}5m{\times}3m$), was mainly composed of 'sandy loam', with the average hydraulic conductivity of $9.1{\times}10^{-4}cm\;s^{-1}$. The average xylene concentration of the site was 42.1 mg $kg^{-1}$, which was more than 2.5 times higher than Korea soil pollution warning limit (15 mg $kg^{-1}$). For the soil flushing, 7,800 L of 0.1~0.2% surfactant solution was injected into three injection wells at the average injection time of 9 hr $d^{-1}$ for 10 days, followed by the additional only groundwater injection of 6,000 L. The same amount of the effluent solution was extracted from three extraction wells. From the analysis for xylene concentration of all effluent at 3 extraction wells, total 166 g of xylene was removed by in-situ surfactant flushing. Even though the residual xylene concentrations of 7 soil sampling locations in the test site were different due to the soil heterogeneity, from the comparison of xylene concentration at 7 locations before/after the feasibility test, 53.9% of the initial xylene in the site was removed from three extraction wells (mainly Ext-N and Ext-M well). The results showed that the in-situ soil flushing by using low concentrated 'Tween 80' solution had a great potential to remediate the xylene contaminated site.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.15 no.6
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• pp.99-109
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• 1999

In the case of domestic general waste landfills, cumulated leachate level is often formed in the landfill due to the waste of high moisture content and it becomes important to characterize the hydraulic properties of the disposed waste. Although many hydrologic studies have been peformed for leachate barriers and pheriperal subsurface environments, few studies have been done to investigate the hydraulic property of the disposed waste and cover soils and to analyse the leachate flow behavior within landfills. In this paper, the geotechnical properties of the waste and buried cover soils are identified through the field experiment including pumping and slug tests. The results of various tests show that the field density of the cover soils is somewhat higher than the maximum laboratory density of cover soils and the vertical flow of leachate and gas in the landfill is prevented by the buried cover soils. The hydraulic conductivities of field pumping test and slug tests are well matched and stayed in the range of hydraulic conductivities of well compacted wastes in the literature.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society for Rock Mechanics Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.79-88
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• 2008

Since the hydraulic fracturing field testing method was introduced first to Korean geotechnical engineers in 1994, there have been lots of progresses in a hardware system as well as an interpretation tool. The hydrofracturing system of first generation was the pipe-line type, so it was not easy to handle. It had been modified to a wire-line system at their second generation. It was more compact one but it also needed an additional air-compressor. Our current system is much more compact and operated by all-in-one system, so it doesn't need an additional air-compressor. With a progress in a hardware system, the software for analyzing the in-situ stress regime has also been progressed. For example, the shut-in pressure, which is the most ambiguous parameter to be obtained from hydrofracturing pressure curves, can now be acquired automatically from the various methods. While the hardware and software for hydrofracturing tests are being developed during the last decade, the author could accumulate the field test results which can cover the almost whole area of South Korea. Currently these field data are used widely in a feasibility study or a preliminary design step for tunnel construction in Korea. Regarding the difficulties in a site selection and a test performance for the in-situ stress measurement at an off-shore area, the in-situ stress regime obtained from the field experiences in the land area can be used indirectly for the design of a sub-sea tunnel. From the hydrofracturing stress measurements, the trend of magnitude and direction of in-situ stress field was shown identically with the geological information in Korea.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.284-287
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• 2005

The flow of groundwater in fractured medium is related to the geometric characteristics of the fracture system. And a fracture aperture and a fracture density are considered as important factor concerning the permeability. Data acquisition of the properties of fracture such as aperture and density is so difficult and has uncertainty. We also cannot know the fracture characteristics through the in-situ tests. We usually obtain the fracture information from a ultrasonic scan logging or borehole television indirectly. Using the deduced results, we can make the fracture system and simulate the groundwater flow and solute transport in the crystalline rock. This study aimed to analyze the correlation between the properties of fracture and hydraulic conductivities obtained at the same interval. The properties of fracture are examined by acoustic televiwer and hydraulic conductivities are obtained by constant Pressure injection test. The distributioin of fracture width and fracture frequency shows the log-normal probability plot. And, Results of correlation analysis explain that opened type fractures have proper relation with hydraulic conductivity. But, as though there are semi-opened type fractures or closed type fractures, those have the permeable structure.

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.9 no.6
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• pp.815-827
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• 2015

The mechanical behavior of soil and soil-rock mixture is investigated via the discrete element method. A non-overlapping combination method of spheres is used to model convex polyhedron rock blocks of soil-rock mixture in the DEM simulations. The meso-mechanical parameters of soil and soil-rock interface in DEM simulations are obtained from the in-situ tests. Based on the Voronoi cell, a method representing volumtric strain of the sample at the particle scale is proposed. The numerical results indicate that the particle rotation, occlusion, dilatation and self-organizing force chains are a remarkable phenomena of the localization band for the soil and soil-rock mixture samples. The localization band in a soil-rock mixture is wider than that in the soil sample. The current research shows that the 3D discrete element method can effectively simulate the mechanical behavior of soil and soil-rock mixture.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.20 no.2
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• pp.213-220
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• 2010

The permeability characterization on the natural barrier for deep geological disposal of radioactive waste is very critical to evaluate total safety and performance assessment of disposal site. However, the confidence level in using previous hydraulic testing equipments consist of simple components to estimate rock mass permeability is not high enough to reflect in situ condition. The purpose of this research is to establish an advanced hydraulic testing equipment, which is applicable to deep borehole (up to 1,000 m), through the improvement of technical problems of previous packer systems. Especially, the straddle packer hydraulic testing equipment was designed to adopt both the hydraulic downhole shut-in valve(H-DHSIV) to minimize the wellbore storage effect and the real time data acquisition system to measure the pressure changes of test interval including its upper and lower parts. The results from this research lead to not only improve current technical level in the field of hydraulic testing but also provide important information to radioactive waste disposal technology development and site characterization project.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.12 no.3
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• pp.319-332
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• 2002

This study is focused on the characterization of an effective hydraulic conductivity in each hydrogeologic unit assumed as an equivalent continuum medium in the granitic area. Four boreholes of 3" diameter were installed and a Multi-packer system was facilitated in the selected borehole. Various in-situ tests including the fracture logging, constant injection and fall-off tests, slug and pulse tests were carried out. A hydrogeologic unit was defined into the upper and lower zones based on the variation of fracture properties and hydraulic conductivities. The difference of the result obtained by the various hydraulic tests and the effective characterization techniques on rock mass permeability are also discussed. The effective hydraulic conductivity of the upper unit was measured by two times(5.27E-10 m/s~7.57E-10 m/s) that of the lower unit(2.45E-10 m/s~6.81E-10 m/s)through the constant injection and fall-off tests.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.5
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• pp.103-110
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• 2005

In this paper, the characteristics of excessive horizontal stress components in Korea were studied using more than five hundred measured data set of in-situ hydraulic fracturing test. Based on the in-situ testing data, the magnitude and orientation of the horizontal stress component and variation of stress ratio (K) with depth were investigated. And also horizontal stress magnitude versus depth relationships and distribution limits of stress ratio components were suggested. For the depth less than 310 m in the entire territory, the stress ratio has a tendency to diminish and stabilize with depth, but fur some areas, it was revealed that the excessive horizontal stress fields with stress ratio close to 3.0 below 200 m in depth have formed. The results from the investigation of excessive horizontal stress regions showed that there existed several regions where the localized excessive horizontal stress was big enough to potentially induce brittle failure around the openings at less than 300 m in depth.