• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2005.10a
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• pp.382-388
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• 2005

Soil vapor extraction(SVE) is an effective and cost efficient method of removing volatile organic compounds(VOCs) and petroleum hydrocarbons from unsaturated soils. However, soil vapor extraction becomes ineffective in soils with low gas permeability, for example soils with air permeabilities less than 1 Darcy. Prefabricated vertical drains(PVDs) have been used for dewatering fine-grained soils for more than 25 years. Incorporating PVDs in and SVE system can extend the effectiveness of SVE to lower permeability soils by shortening the air flow-paths and ultimately expediting contaminant removal. The objective of the work described herein was to effectively incorporate PVDs into a SVE remediation system and to demonstrate a PVDs enhanced SVE system at full scale. The finding from this research will facilitate the design of field PVD-SVE systems in terms by providing insight into the optimal spacing between PVDs, the radius of influence of the wells and the flow rates to be used to capture and extract gas phase contaminants.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Soil and Groundwater Environment Conference
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• 2005.04a
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• pp.114-116
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• 2005

Natural attenuation has been actively studied and often selected as final clean-up process in remediation of contaminated ground-water and soil for the last decade. Accordingly, understanding of natural processes affecting the fate and transport of contaminants in the subsurface becomes important for a success of implementation of the natural remediation strategy, Contaminant advection and diffusion processes in the unsaturated zone are naturally related to environmental changes in the atmosphere. The atmospheric pressure changes affecting the transport of contaminants in the subsurface are investigated in this study. Moisture content, trichloroethylene (TCE) concentration, temperature, and pressure variations in the subsurface were measured for the July, August, November, and December 2001 at Picatinny Arsenal, New Jersey. These data were used for a one-phase flow and one-component transport model in simulating the soil-gas flow and accordingly the TCE transport in the subsurface in accordance with the atmosphere pressure variations at the surface. The soil-gas velocities during the sampling periods varied with a magnitude of $10^{-6}\;to\;10^{-7}\;m\;s^{-1}$ at land surface. The TCE advection fluxes at land surface were several orders of magnitude smaller than the TCE diffusion fluxes. A sensitivy analysis indicated that advection fluxes were more sensitive to changes in geo-environmental conditions compared to diffusion fluxes. Of all the parameters investigated in this study, moisture content has the most significant effect on TCE advection and diffusion fluxes.

• Journal of Korea Water Resources Association
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• v.31 no.6
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• pp.741-755
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• 1998

An extension of TOPMODEL was developed for rainfall-runoff simulation in agricultural watersheds equipped with tile drains. Tile drain functions are incorporated into the framework of TOPMODEL. Nine possible flow generation scenarios are suggested for tile drained watershed and applied in the modeling procedure. In the model development process, the traditional physically based storage approach and a new approach using a transfer function for the simulation of the flow in the unsaturated zone were compared. In order to provide better insight into the simulation process, a regionalized sensitivity analysis was performed to test the performance of the model and to compare the behavior of the transfer function to that of the simple storage related formulation. The results of analysis show good performance of the transfer function approach. Since the rainfall-runoff response pattern tends to vary seasonally, seven events distributed throughout a year were used in the sensitivity analysis to investigate the seasonal variation of the hydrologic characteristics. It is found that the sensitivity of each parameter described by the model are varied seasonally.

• The Journal of Engineering Geology
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• v.19 no.2
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• pp.205-215
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• 2009

The conventional numerical models to analyze flow in subsurface porous media under the transient state usually generate numerical oscillation and unstability due to local flux domain for critical cases such as infiltration into initially dry soil during rainfall period. In this case, it is required refined mesh and small time step, but it decrease efficiency of computation. In this study, numerical unstability in discontinuity domain is removed by applying particle tracking algorithm to simulate unsteady subsurface flow with inflow boundary condition. Finally the hybrid LE FEM improving numerical stability is proposed. The hypothetical domains with unsteady uniform and nonuniform flow field were used to demonstrated algorithm verification. In comparison with analytic solution, we obtained reasonable results and conducted simulation of hypothetical 3-D recharge/pumping area. The proposed algorithm can simulate saturated/unsaturated porous media with more practical problems and will greatly contribute to accuracy and stability of numerical computation.

• Proceedings of the Korean Geotechical Society Conference
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• 2006.03a
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• pp.75-85
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• 2006

In recent geotechnical engineering, geothermal approach has been on the horizon to deal with geoenvironmental issues, freezing and thawing problems, and seepage phenomenon in dams and embankments. In this study, geothermal characteristic through inner body of dams and its influence on the seepage flow were experimented by lab test and field instrumentation. Also, one of up-to-date temperature monitoring technique, called as multi-channel thermal line sensing, was evaluated its availability. As a result of lab test, it is found that the seepage flow has influence on the geothermal characteristic and a potential of finding phreatic line and seepage fluctuation could be possible by continuous temperature monitoring using thermal line sensing skills. These kine of geothermal information could be available to the modelling of water geo-structure interaction. Out of short-term field tests, clear water table and temperature distribution of a dam were easily found through temperature monitoring in holes located near a reservoir and holes within a depth of constant temperature layer. However, it is also found that the geothermal flow and finding seepage line could not be easily understandable through multi-channel temperature monitoring because of the existence of constant temperature field, thermal conductivity of soils and rocks, and unsaturated characteristics of geo-material. In this case, long-term geothermal monitoring is recommended to find sudden fluctuation of seepage line and amount of leakage.

• Journal of Soil and Groundwater Environment
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• v.12 no.5
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• pp.9-18
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• 2007

Soil vapor extraction (SVE) is an effective and cost efficient method of removing volatile organic compounds (VOCs) and petroleum hydrocarbons from unsaturated soils. However, soil vapor extraction becomes ineffective in soils with low gas permeability, for example soils with air permeabilities less than 1 Darcy. Incorporating PVDs in an SVE system can extend the effectiveness of SVE to lower permeability soils by shortening the air flow-paths and ultimately expediting contaminant removal. The objective of the research described herein was to effectively incorporate PVDs into a SVE remediation system. The test results show that the gas permeability was evaluated for four different equivalent diameters, increasing the equivalent diameter results in a decrease in the calculated gas permeability. It was found that the porosity for the dry condition was greater than that of the wet condition and will allow flow rate for the same vacuum flow, offering a low resistance to the air flow.

• International Journal of Highway Engineering
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• v.14 no.2
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• pp.175-181
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• 2012

Under unsaturated capacity conditions with balanced approach flows, roundabout gives less delay and queue length than existing signalized intersections; however, over capacity conditions with unbalanced approach flows(flow above 450 pcu/h/lane), roundabouts efficiency drops due to the short gap between entering vehicles and circulating vehicles. This study provides a roundabout Signal Metering transfer standard and operation method. In this study, a four-way-approach with one-lane roundabout is selected to compare the Signal Metering performance for the case of unbalanced flow conditions. The performance is evaluated by using SIDRA software in terms of average delay and queue length. The result shows that the Signal Metering provides substantial improvements for the case of total approach flow is 1,800~2,000 pcu/h in which the main approach flow ratio is 60~70% gives 30~40% less delay and 30~60% less queue length than normal roundabout operation. Also, it is approved that operational performance saving can be achieved when the Metered Approach is selected adjoining to the main approach in pair.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.39 no.5
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• pp.13-26
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• 2023

This study examined the soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC), considering the volume change, using wetting curves on the field monitoring data of a wireless sensor network. Special attention was given to evaluating the landslide vulnerability by deriving a matric suction suitable for the actual site during the wetting process. Laboratory drying SWCC and shrinkage laboratory tests were used to perform the combined analysis of landslide and debris flow. The results showed that the safety factor of the wetting curve, considering the volume change of soil, was lower than that of the drying curve. As a result of numerical analyses of the debris flow simulation, more debris flow occurred in the wetting curve than in the drying curve. It was also found that the landslide analysis with the drying curve tends to overestimate the actual safety factor with the in situ wetting curve. Finally, it is confirmed that calculating the matric suction through SWCC considering the volume change is more appropriate and reasonable for the field landslide analysis.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.21 no.4
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• pp.135-143
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• 2005

This paper presents a case history of a geosynthetics-reinforced segmental retaining wall, which collapsed during a severe rainfall immediately after the completion of the wall construction. In an attempt to identify possible causes for the collapse, a comprehensive investigation was carried out including physical and strength tests on the backfill, stability analyses on the as-built design based on the current design approaches, and slope stability analyses with pore pressure consideration. The investigation revealed that the inappropriate as-built design and the bad-quality backfill were mainly responsible for the collapse. This paper describes the site condition including wall design, details of the results of investigation and finally, lessons learned. Practical significance of the findings from this study is also discussed.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.51-64
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• 2000

This paper presents a procedure of calculating a safety factor of the unsaturated slope suffering from the rainfall infiltration. The process of infiltration into a slope due to rainfall and its effect on the behavior of the soil slope are examined by using a two dimensional finite element flow-deformation coupled analysis. A factor of safety is calculated at various elapsed times after the commencement of rainfall as in the following procedure. First, stresses are estimated at each Gaussian point from the coupled finite element analysis. Then, the global stress smoothing method is applied to get a continuous stress field. Based on this stress field, a factor of safety is calculated for a specified slip surface by a stress integration scheme. Then, a search strategy is used to find out a critical slip surface which is associated with the minimum factor of safety. Some numerical examples are analyzed in order to study the effect of hydraulic conductivity on the slope stability during rain-induced infiltration. According to the results, local failure zone can be formed near the slope surface due to inhomogeneous distribution of hydraulic conductivity If the failure zone is once formed, then the region extends until a large amount of slide activates. Therefore the local failure can be neglected no longer in the stability analysis.