• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.24 no.1
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• pp.15-28
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• 2021

Digging well foundation has been widely used in railway bridges due to its good economy and reliability. In other instances, bridges with digging well foundation still have damage risks during earthquakes. However, there is still a lack of knowledge of lateral behavior of digging well foundation considering the soil-foundation interaction. In this study, scaled models of bridge pier-digging well foundation system are constructed for quasi-static test to investigate their lateral behaviors. The failure mechanism and responses of the soil-foundation-pier interaction system are analyzed. The testing results indicate that the digging foundations tend to rotate as a rigid body under cyclic lateral load. Moreover, the depth-width ratio of digging well foundation has a significant influence on the failure mode of the interaction system, especially on the distribution of foundation displacement and the failure of pier. The energy dissipation capacity of the interaction system is discussed by using index of the equivalent viscous damping ratio. The damping varies with the depth-width ratio changing. The equivalent stiffness of soil-digging well foundation-pier interaction system decreases with the increase of loading displacement in a nonlinear manner. The absolute values of the interaction system stiffness are significantly influenced by the depth-width ratio of the foundation.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Safety
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• v.21 no.3 s.75
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• pp.87-93
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• 2006

When a structure is constructed at the site composed of soil, the behavior of a structure is much affected by the characteristics of soil. Therefore, the effect of soil-structure interaction is an important consideration in the design of a structure at the site composed of soil. Precise analysis of soil-structure interaction requires a proper description of soil profile. However, most of approaches are nearly unpractical for soil exhibiting material discontinuity and complex geometry since those cannot consider precisely complicated soil profiles. To overcome these difficulties, an improved integration method is adopted and enables to integrate easily over an element with material discontinuity. As a result the mesh can be generated rapidly and highly structured, leading to regular and precise stiffness matrix. The influence of soil profile on the response is examined by the presented method. It is seen that the presented method can be easily used on soil-structure interaction problems with complicated soil profile and produce reliable results regardless of material discontinuities.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.6 no.2 s.20
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• pp.25-36
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• 2004

The pressuremeter test can be used as an effective tool for evaluating stiffness of lower pavement layers including subgrade and subbase. At present, the most practical and applicable methods for evaluation of the stiffness of the subgrade and subbase are PBT and CBR in Korea. However, these methods have inherent drawbacks and large variabilities of test results themselves. In this study, an evaluation method and a test procedure that can be used for decision of pavement stiffness using pressuremeter were developed. The obtained results representing stiffness of the subgrade and subbase can replace PBT's soil reaction value k and CBR in design methods. It is found that the developed procedure based on the pressuremeter can provide an effective correaltion between the PBT's soil reaction value k and PMT's reloading modulus ($E_R$).

• Geomechanics and Engineering
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• v.29 no.4
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• pp.471-486
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• 2022

The effect of segmental joints is one of main importance for the segmental lining design when tunnels are excavated by a mechanized process. In this paper, segmental tunnel linings are analyzed by two numerical methods, namely the Beam-Spring Method (BSM) and the Solid-Interface Method (SIM). For this purpose, the Tehran Subway Line 6 Tunnel is considered to be the reference case. Comprehensive 2D numerical simulations are performed considering the soil's calibrated plastic hardening model (PH). Also, an advanced 3D numerical model was used to obtain the stress relaxation value. The SIM numerical model is conducted to calculate the average rotational stiffness of the longitudinal joints considering the joints bending moment distribution and joints openings. Then, based on the BSM, a sensitivity analysis was performed to investigate the influence of the ground rigidity, depth to diameter ratios, slippage between the segment and ground, segment thickness, number of segments and pattern of joints. The findings indicate that when the longitudinal joints are flexible, the soil-segment interaction effect is significant. The joint rotational stiffness effect becomes remarkable with increasing the segment thickness, segment number, and tunnel depth. The pattern of longitudinal joints, in addition to the joint stiffness ratio and number of segments, also depends on the placement of longitudinal joints of the key segment in the tunnel crown (similar to patterns B and B').

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2008.03a
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• pp.636-643
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• 2008

The objective of this paper is to assess the potential use of the geogauge and the light falling weight deflectometer (LFWD) and the soil impact hammer as quality control/quality assurance $Q_C/Q_A$ devices for compacted soil layers. A comprehensive field experimental program considering variation of number of compaction, water contents and thickness of compaction layer was conducted on compacted layers of gravel sand. The geogauge, LFWD, the soil impact hammer and static load test (PLT) as a reference test were performed for the compacted layers. The geogauge elastic modulus, $E_G$, the LFWD dynamic modulus, ELFWD, empirical soil stiffness, $K_{30}$, obtained from soil impact hammer and soil stiffness directly obtained from PLT, $K_{30}$, were correlated with increasing number of compaction. The results of this study show that the geogauge, LFWD and the soil impact hammer, which are very simple to test, can be used as substituting devices for static PLT which is a conventional quality control/quality assurance $Q_C/Q_A$ devices for compacted soil layers.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.9
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• pp.5-17
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• 2022

Recently, several studies have been conducted on virtual fixed-point and elastic soil spring methods to simulate the soil-pile interaction in response to spectrum analysis of pile-supported structures. However, the soil spring stiffness has not been properly considered due to the seismic load magnitude, and studies on the response spectrum analysis of pile-supported structures considering this circumstance are inadequate. Therefore, in this study, the response spectrum analysis was performed considering the soil spring stiffness according to the seismic load magnitude, and the dynamic behavior of the pile-supported structure was evaluated by comparing it with existing virtual fixed-point and elastic soil spring methods. Comparing the experiment and analysis, the moment differences occurred up to 117% and 21% in the virtual fixed-point and elastic soil spring models, respectively. Moreover, when the analysis was performed using an API p-y curve considering the soil spring stiffness according to the seismic load magnitude, the moment difference between the experiment and analysis was derived at a maximum of < 4%, and it is the most accurate method to simulate the experimental model response.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.32 no.6
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• pp.17-26
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• 2016

Characteristic behaviors of geo-structure during freezing and thawing process have to be understood based on fundamental knowledge on phase change in porous soil and interaction between soil and structure. Inversion analysis using published one-dimensional soil freezing tests was conducted to suggest a mechanical model to consider an effect of the ice saturation on Young's modulus. Silty soil was more sensitive to temperature than weathered granite soil and sand, and weathered granite soil was more affected by initial water saturation in stiffness decrease than silty soil. Numerical simulations on chilled gas pipeline showed that shielding effect from surrounding frozen zone around the pipe decreases impact from external load onto the pipe. And a pipe installed in sand backfill showed more heaving due to relatively low stiffness of sand during freezing than that of surrounding in-situ weather granite soil. However, it had more stable stress condition due to effective stress redistribution from external load.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.29 no.11
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• pp.29-47
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• 2013

This study undertook research on the sections of 90 harbor structures which applied a pile-type soil improvement using the soil-cement pile and then, determined the minimum replacement rate for each section, showing sufficient stability in all relevant studies including numerical analysis. The reliability of the numerical analysis was verified by a centrifuge model test. As a result of the study, it was revealed that when the foundation soil is too soft ($s_u$ = under 15 kPa), it is unsuitable to apply a pile-type ground improvement to a soil improvement regardless of types of super structures. And a pile-type soil improvement was found to be suitable for a harbor structure with the relative stiffness ratio (n) of less than 50~75 at a maximum and the 2~3 MPa strength of the soil-cement pile. Furthermore the governing factor for the minimum replacement rate for the pile-type soil improvement was turned out to be the allowable horizontal displacement. Therefore, the primary review to see the applicability of the pile-type soil improvement requires the evaluation of horizontal displacements.

• Journal of Korean Society of Steel Construction
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• v.18 no.2
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• pp.173-180
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• 2006

The seismic responses of a building are affected by the base soil conditions. In this study, linear time-history seismic analysis and nonlinear pushover static seismic analysis were performed to estimate the base shear forces of 3-, 5-, and 7-story steel buildings, considering the rigid and soft soil conditions. Foundation soil stiffness, based on the equivalent static stiffness formula, is used for the damper, one of the Link elements in SAP 2000. The base shear forces of the steel buildings, estimated through time-history analysis using the general-purpose structural-analysis program of SAP 2000, were compared with those calculated using the domestic seismic design code, the UBC-97 design response spectrum. and pushover static nonlinear analysis. The steel buildings designed for gravity and wind loads showed elastic responses with a moderate earthquake of 0.11 g, while the elastic soft-soil layer increased the displacement and the base shear force of the buildings due to soil-structure interaction and soil amplification. Therefore, considering the characteristics of the soft-soil layer, it is more reasonable to perform an elastic seismic analysis of a building's structure during weak or moderate earthquakes.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• v.42 no.1
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• pp.39-53
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• 2012

This paper presents an alternative way to derive the exact element stiffness matrix for a beam on Winkler foundation and the fixed-end force vector due to a linearly distributed load. The element flexibility matrix is derived first and forms the core of the exact element stiffness matrix. The governing differential compatibility of the problem is derived using the virtual force principle and solved to obtain the exact moment interpolation functions. The matrix virtual force equation is employed to obtain the exact element flexibility matrix using the exact moment interpolation functions. The so-called "natural" element stiffness matrix is obtained by inverting the exact element flexibility matrix. Two numerical examples are used to verify the accuracy and the efficiency of the natural beam element on Winkler foundation.