Dynamic response of an eccentrically lined circular tunnel in poroelastic soil under seismic excitation

An exact analysis for two-dimensional dynamic interaction of monochromatic progressive plane compressional and shear seismic waves with a permeable circular tunnel lining of circumferentially varying wall thickness buried in a boundless porous elastic fluid-saturated formation is presented. The novel features of Biot dynamic theory of poroelasticity in conjunction with the translational addition theorems for cylindrical wave functions, along with the appropriate wave field expansions and the pertinent boundary conditions are employed to develop a closed-form solution in form of infinite series. The analytical results are illustrated with numerical examples in which an air-filled and water-saturated permeable tunnel lining of variable wall thickness, embedded within water-saturated surrounding formations of distinct frame properties (soft, stiff, and stiff viscoelastic soil), is insonified by fast compressional or shear waves at selected angles of incidence. The effects of liner eccentricity, interface permeability, formation material type, incident wave frequency, and angle of incidence on the hoop stress amplitude are evaluated and discussed for representative values of the parameters characterizing the system. Limiting cases are considered and good agreements with the solutions available in the literature are obtained.     

Optimisation of deep mixing technique by artificial neural network based on laboratory and field experiments

ABSTRACT

Ground improvement techniques are inevitable for weak soils that cannot endure the design load imposed by superstructures. Deep mixing technique (DMT) as one of these methods is promising and effective when a deep soil layer with low bearing capacity is encountered. Such deposits are quite common in the South-west of Iran where the studied site is located. In order to validate the influence of DMT on the enhancement of strength, both in-situ and laboratory tests were conducted. Afterwards, a parametric study was carried out to investigate the influence of key factors including cement content, water–cement ratio, curing time and plasticity index (PI) on the performance of DMT. In summary, a total of 192 different conditions were examined in this study by using two methods of 3D plotting and artificial neural networks (ANNs) as the optimisation tool. Results proved the importance of water–cement ratio as a key parameter in DMT. Based on the trained networks, ANN was revealed to give satisfactory predictions on the strength of an improved soil with different admixture conditions. More important, the optimisation made by ANN could determine the specific values for selected key admixture factors to reach a desired strength level with the coefficient of determination higher than 0.85.     

Assessment of seismic amplification factor of excavation with support system

Retaining walls have been used in many construction projects such as for road and inclined surfaces protection. The damage caused by an earthquake depends on the fundamental frequency, amplitude and the duration of the seismic motion. These parameters strongly depend on the seismic properties of the layers that are near the surface. In the study of retaining walls, in addition to the influence of soil, the influence of topography is also important. In the present study, site response analysis is performed by using finite element software PLAXIS to obtain the effect of various factors such as embedded length of the sheet pile, underground water table, length and angle of the nail, shear wave velocity of soil on site effect and dynamic response. Moreover, for better understanding of the effect of the above parameters, the stability analysis was performed by using shear reduction method. The results show that an increase in the embedded length of the sheet pile and the length of nailing causes an increase in the amplification factor. Moreover, for shear-wave velocity in the range of 200-600 m/s, the amplification factor increases with increase of the shear-wave velocity due to the decrease of nonlinear behavior.     

Evaluation of the rockburst potential in longwall coal mining using passive seismic velocity tomography and image subtraction technique

Rockburst is a typical dynamic disaster in underground coal mines which its occurrences relate to the mechanical quality of coal seam and surrounding rock mass and also the condition of stress distribution. The main aim of this paper is to study the potential of rockburst in a longwall coal mine by using of passive seismic velocity tomography and image subtraction technique. For this purpose, first by mounting an array of receivers on the surface above the active panel, the mining-induced seismic data as a passive source for several continuous days were recorded. Then, the three-dimensional tomograms using simultaneous iteration reconstruction technique (SIRT) for each day are created and by employing the velocity filtering, the overstressed zones are detected. In addition, the two-dimensional seismic velocity tomograms in coal seam level by slicing the three-dimensional tomograms are obtained. Then the state of stress changes in successive days by applying the image subtraction technique on these two-dimensional tomograms is considered. The results show that the compilation of filtered three-dimensional tomograms and subtracted images is an appropriate approach for detecting the overstressed zones around the panel and subsequent evaluation of rockburst potential. The research conclusion proves that the applied approach in this study in combination with field observations of rock mass status can effectively identify the rockburst-prone areas during the mining operation and help to improve the safety condition.