Back-analysis of a seismically induced highway embankment failure during the 1999 Düzce earthquake

An earthquake of magnitude 7.2 on the Richter scale occurred on 12 November 1999 in the Düzce-Bolu region of Turkey. The region was also hit approximately 3 months before during the devastating Kocaeli earthquake of 17 August 1999. Besides high casualties and damage to various engineering structures and buildings, slope and embankment failures on the highway and the country roads occurred. In this study, the authors are concerned with the back-analysis of an embankment failure that occurred on the four lanes E-5 highway connecting Ankara to Gstanbul at Bakacak in the Bolu Province during the 1999 Düzce earthquake. Both pseudo-dynamic and dynamic limiting equilibrium methods are used to back analyse the conditions for the initiation of failure and also displacement responses of the embankment during the earthquake shaking. After having given a brief summary of the investigations on the post-failure state, the geology and geotechnical characteristics of the site, and the dynamic limiting equilibrium method developed and used for analyses are described. The results of the back-analysis based on a pseudo-dynamic approach, revealed that the maximum ground acceleration to initiate the failure of the embankment was probably about 0.125 g. On the other hand, the application of a method for computing the displacement and velocity responses of the failed embankment showed that the failure was possible when the embankment was subjected to ground accelerations similar to that recorded at the Düzce station. In addition, the computations also revealed that the time history of accelerations could be very important for the failure of slopes and embankments.     

Geotechnical and geoenvironmental characteristics of man-made underground structures in Cappadocia, Turkey

Underground cities and semi-underground settlements, most of which are 1500 years at least, exist in the Cappadocia Region of Turkey. These man-made rock structures are carved in soft tuffs and the best examples of long-term performance of man-made structures in the field of rock engineering. The tuffs also have good thermal isolation properties to be used as housing and storage of foods. In this article, the authors are only concerned with physical and short-term mechanical characteristics due to the wide-spectrum of the theme and the in situ characterization of the Cappadocia tuffs, and the results of investigations are presented. In addition, a critical overview on possible engineering geological problems at Cappadocia with mechanical aspects of historical and modern rock structures and their implications in rock engineering is made. From the experimental results in the field, it is evident that the engineering characteristics of these rocks do not show significant changes in vertical and horizontal directions. However, they are prone to atmospheric conditions. In addition, temperature and humidity measurements at different floors of the underground cities and various parts of semi-underground settlements indicated that variations in climatic conditions of the openings are very small when compared to those outside the ground surface.     

Carcinogenic risk evaluation for human health risk assessment from soils contaminated with heavy metals

Human activities have progressively increased in recent years. Consequently, significant environment deterioration resulted. Soils have a particularly varied vulnerability to heavy metal pollution, especially in the vicinity of industrial areas. Heavy metal contamination of soil may induce risks and hazards to humans and the ecosystem, while toxic metals in soil can severely inhibit the biodegradation of organic contaminants. This paper is focused on human health risk assessment from extremely contaminated soil with heavy metals, mainly with carcinogenic elements. The study refers to an agricultural area in the vicinity of an old metallurgical processing industrial facility. The contaminants evaluated in the present paper are beryllium (Be), cadmium (Cd), chromium (Cr), nickel (Ni) and lead (Pb). Contamination level is pointed out through laboratory analysis results of soil samples taken from 0–0.2 m, 0.2–0.4 m soil layers and up to 2.1 m soil depth. Some heavy metal concentrations (Cd, Cr and Pb) exceed the intervention thresholds for sensitive areas, as they are stipulated in the national regulation in Romania. The identified average concentration levels of Cd, Cr^VI and Pb in the first layer of the investigated land are 23.83, 7.71 and 704.22 mg/kg_d.w, respectively. The results show that the potential risk of human health is relevant (higher than the acceptable one after World Health Organization) and a possible solution for the remediation should become a major concern for the investigated area.     

Towing dynamics of a liferaft and fast rescue craft in a surface wave

The equations of motion for the coupled dynamics of a small liferaft and fast rescue craft in a surface wave are formulated in two dimensions using the methods of Kane and Levinson [1985. Dynamics: Theory and Applications. McGraw-Hill Inc., New York]. It is assumed that the motion normal to the wave surface is small and can be neglected, i.e. the bodies move along the propagating wave profile. The bodies are small so that wave diffraction and reflection are negligible. A Stokes second order wave is used and the wave forces are applied using Morison's equation for a body in accelerated flow. Wind loads are similarly modelled using drag coefficients. The equations are solved numerically using the Runge–Kutta routine “ode45” of MATLAB^®. The numerical model provides guidelines for predicting the tow loads and motions of small craft in severe sea states.     

Mesoscale surface circulation and variability of Southern Indian Ocean derived by combining satellite altimetry and drifter observations

High resoultion Eulerian mean velocity field has been derived by combining the satellite tracked surface drifter data with satellite altimetry and ocean surface winds. The drifter data used in this study includes Argos and surface drifter data from Global Drifter Program. Maps of Sea Level Anomaly(MSLA) weekly files with a resolution of(1/3)° in both Latitude and Longitude for the period 1993–2012 have been used. The Ekman current is computed using ocean surface mean wind fields from scatterometers onboard ERS 1/2,Quikscat and ASCAT. The derived mean velocity field exhibits the broad flow of Antarctic Circumpolar Current with speeds up to 0.6 m/s.Anomalous field is quite significant in the western part between 20° and 40°E and in the eastern part between 80°E and 100°E with velocity anomaly up to 0.3 m/s. The estimated mean flow pattern well agrees with the dynamic topography derived from in-situ observations. Also,the derived velocity field is consistent with the in-situ ADCP current measurements. Eddy kinetic energy illustrates an increasing trend during 1993–2008 and is in phase coherence with the Southern Annular Mode by three month lag. Periodic modulations are found in the eddy kinetic energy due the low frequency Antarctic Circumpolar Wave propagation.     

Extreme rainfalls in SE South America

Heavy rainfall trends in a region of south-eastern South America during 1959–2002 were discussed using daily data of 52 meteorological stations of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay. Changes in intensity and frequency were both studied with different statistical tests and approaches to check the significance of trends of single and regional aggregated rainfall series. There were predominant positive trends in the annual maximum rainfalls, as well as a remarkable increment in the frequency of heavy rainfalls over thresholds ranging from 50 to 150 mm. However, significant positive trends were not shown in the series of annual maximums and shown only in 15% to 30% of the series of frequencies over thresholds. This lack of significance is due to the high variability of heavy rainfalls in space and time, which makes difficult their capture by single rain gauges. Thus, when the assessment of the heavy rainfall indicators of intensity and frequency were conducted at the regional and sub-regional level, it showed significant trends, both in intensity and frequency over thresholds, with a clearer signal in central and eastern Argentina between 30° and 40° S.     

How effective is the new generation of GPM satellite precipitation in characterizing the rainfall variability over Malaysia?

We investigated the potential of the new generation of satellite precipitation product from the Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) to characterize the rainfall in Malaysia. Most satellite precipitation products have limited ability to precisely characterize the high dynamic rainfall variation that occurred at both time and scale in this humid tropical region due to the coarse grid size to meet the physical condition of the smaller land size, sub-continent and islands. Prior to the status quo, an improved satellite precipitation was required to accurately measure the rainfall and its distribution. Subsequently, the newly released of GPM precipitation product at half-hourly and 0.1° resolution served an opportunity to anticipate the aforementioned conflict. Nevertheless, related evidence was not found and therefore, this study made an initiative to fill the gap. A total of 843 rain gauges over east (Borneo) and west Malaysia (Peninsular) were used to evaluate the rainfall the GPM rainfall data. The assessment covered all critical rainy seasons which associated with Asian Monsoon including northeast (Nov. - Feb.), southwest (May - Aug.) and their subsequent inter-monsoon period (Mar. - Apr. & Sep. - Oct.). The ability of GPM to provide quantitative rainfall estimates and qualitative spatial rainfall patterns were analysed. Our results showed that the GPM had good capacity to depict the spatial rainfall patterns in less heterogeneous rainfall patterns (Spearman’s correlation, 0.591 to 0.891) compared to the clustered one (r = 0.368 to 0.721). Rainfall intensity and spatial heterogeneity that is largely driven by seasonal monsoon has significant influence on GPM ability to resolve local rainfall patterns. In quantitative rainfall estimation, large errors can be primarily associated with the rainfall intensity increment. 77% of the error variation can be explained through rainfall intensity particularly the high intensity (> 35 mm d^-1). A strong relationship between GPM rainfall and error was found from heavy (~35 mm d^-1) to violent rain (160 mm d^-1). The output of this study provides reference regarding the performance of GPM data for respective hydrology studies in this region.