Inelastic displacement ratios for soil–structure systems allowed to uplift

The simultaneous effects of soil–structure interaction, foundation uplift and inelastic behavior of the superstructure on total displacement response of soil–structure systems are investigated. The superstructure is modeled as an equivalent single‐degree‐of‐freedom system with bilinear behavior mounted on a rigid foundation resting on distributed tensionless Winkler springs and dampers. It is well known that the behavior of soil–structure systems can be well described using a limited number of nondimensional parameters. Here, by introducing two new parameters, the concept is extended to inelastic soil–structure systems in which the foundation is allowed to uplift. An extensive parametric study is conducted for a wide range of the key parameters through nonlinear time history analyses. It is shown that while uplifting soil–structure systems experience excessive displacements, in comparison with systems that are not allowed to uplift, ductility demand in the superstructure generally decreases owing to foundation uplift. A new inelastic displacement ratio (IDR) is proposed in conjunction with a nonlinear static analysis of uplifting soil–structure systems. Simplified expressions are also provided to estimate the proposed IDR. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Pre-processing data using wavelet transform and PCA based on support vector regression and gene expression programming for river flow simulation

An accurate estimation of flow using different models is an issue for water resource researchers. In this study, support vector regression (SVR) and gene expression programming (GEP) models in daily and monthly scale were used in order to simulate Gamasiyab River flow in Nahavand, Iran. The results showed that although the performance of models in daily scale was acceptable and the result of SVR model was a little better, their performance in the daily scale was really better than the monthly scale. Therefore, wavelet transform was used and the main signal of every input was decomposed. Then, by using principal component analysis method, important sub-signals were recognized and used as inputs for the SVR and GEP models to produce wavelet-support vector regression (WSVR) and wavelet-gene expression programming. The results showed that the performance of WSVR was better than the SVR in such a way that the combination of SVR with wavelet could improve the determination coefficient of the model up to 3% and 18% for daily and monthly scales, respectively. Totally, it can be said that the combination of wavelet with SVR is a suitable tool for the prediction of Gamasiyab River flow in both daily and monthly scales.     

Effect of non-linear soil–structure interaction on seismic response of tall slender structures

Some structures may be very massive and may have to be located on relatively soft soil. In such cases, the soil adjacent to the structure behaves in a non-linear fashion and affects the response of the structure to the dynamic loading. An approximate hybrid approach to analyse soil–structure systems accounting for soil non-linearities has been developed in this paper. The approach combines the consistent infinitesimal finite-element cell method (CIFECM) and the finite-element method (FEM). The CIFECM is employed to model the non-linear (near-field) zone of the soil supporting the structure as a series of bounded media. The material properties of the bounded media are selected so that they are compatible with the average effective strains over the whole bounded medium during the excitation. The linear zone of soil away from the foundation, the far-field, is modelled as an unbounded medium using the CIFECM for unbounded media. The structure itself is represented by the FEM. The proposed method is used to model the dynamic response of a one-mass structure and a TV-tower supported on a homogenous stratum and excited by an earthquake. It was found that the secondary soil non-linearity might increase or decrease the base forces of tall slender structures depending on the type of structure, frequency content of the input motion and the dynamic properties of the near-field soil.     

Response of pile foundations to rayleigh waves and obliquely incident body waves

The paper presents results of a study on the harmonic response of piles and pile groups embedded in a halfspace to various forms of seismic waves. These include the Rayleigh wave as well as obliquely incident P, SV and SH waves. The pertinent mixed boundary value problems of pile-soil-pile interaction are solved by a numerical model of the boundary integral nature. All modes of foundation vibrations, i.e. translational, rocking and torsional, are included in the model. The results presented are used to highlight the salient features of the seismic response of piles. In addition, the influence of certain pile-soil parameters, such as pile rigidity and pile spacing, on the seismic behaviour of pile foundations is investigated.     

An example of landslide-inflicted damage to tunnel in the 2004 Mid-Niigata Prefecture earthquake

A large number of landslides induced by the 2004 Mid Niigata Prefecture earthquake resulted in the closure of 233 segments of national and prefectural routes in Higashiyama mountain district, and 61 localities were completely isolated. Since railway and road facilities follow closely the motion of soils, damage to these facilities has to be discussed in terms of soil deformations that they experienced. The example of Kizawa tunnel shows that even relatively small soil deformations can be large enough to cause serious cracking of tunnel lining.     

Five-frequency Galileo long-baseline ambiguity resolution with multipath mitigation

For long-baseline over several hundreds of kilometers, the ionospheric delays that cannot be fully removed by differencing observations between receivers hampers rapid ambiguity resolution. Compared with forming ionospheric-free linear combination using dual- or triple-frequency observations, estimating ionospheric delays using uncombined observations keeps all the information of the observations and allows extension of the strategy to any number of frequencies. As the number of frequencies has increased for the various GNSSs, it is possible to study long-baseline ambiguity resolution performance using up to five frequencies with uncombined observations. We make use of real Galileo observations on five frequencies with a sampling interval of 1 s. Two long baselines continuously receiving signals from six Galileo satellites during corresponding test time intervals were processed to study the formal and empirical ambiguity success rates in case of full ambiguity resolution (FAR). The multipath effects are mitigated using the measurements of another day when the constellation repeats. Compared to the results using multipath-uncorrected Galileo observations, it is found that the multipath mitigation plays an important role in improving the empirical ambiguity success rates. A high number of frequencies are also found to be helpful to achieve high ambiguity success rate within a short time. Using multipath-uncorrected observations on two, three, four and five frequencies, the mean empirical success rates are found to be about 73, 88, 91, and 95% at 10 s, respectively, while the values are increased to higher than 86, 95, 98, and 99% after mitigating the multipath effects.     

Kinetics of DTPA extraction of Zn,Pb, and Cd from contaminated calcareous soils amended with sewage sludge

The aim of this study was to determine the influence of sewage sludge (SLU) amendment on the desorption characteristics of zinc (Zn), lead (Pb), and cadmium (Cd) in contaminated calcareous soils. Three levels of SLU (0, 1, and 3% w/w) were added to the two calcareous contaminated soils. Samples were incubated for 30 days and equilibrated with 0.005 M DTPA for 0.25 to 240 h. The addition of SLU significantly increased the amount of DTPA-extractable Zn in soils. While the amounts of Cd, Pb, dissolved organic carbon (DOC), and pH showed a significant increase only in 3% w/w of SLU, with the exception of Cd desorption in 1% w/w of SLU, kinetics of Zn, Pb, and Cd extraction increased together with an increase in the level of applied SLU. The best models for describing desorption data were explicitly power function and Elovich. The rate constants of Zn and Pb had significant correlations with DTPA-extractable Zn and Pb, DOC and pH, which affect Zn and Pb desorption. Also, the rate constants of Cd had significant correlations with CEC that can be deemed as equivalent to the fact that Cd desorption is controlled by surface adsorption, particularly in the lower sludge application amount. These results can be used for management of sewage sludge application in contaminated calcareous soils.     

A new insight into onset of inertial flow in porous media using network modeling with converging/diverging pores

The network modeling approach is applied to provide a new insight into the onset of non-Darcy flow through porous media. The analytical solutions of one-dimensional Navier-Stokes equation in sinusoidal and conical converging/diverging throats are used to calculate the pressure drop/flow rate responses in the capillaries of the network. The analysis of flow in a single pore revealed that there are two different regions for the flow coefficient ratio as a function of the aspect ratio. It is found that the critical Reynolds number strongly depends on the pore geometrical properties including throat length, average aspect ratio, and average coordination number of the porous media, and an estimation of such properties is required to achieve more reliable predictions. New criteria for the onset of non-Darcy flow are also proposed to overcome the lack of geometrical data. Although the average aspect ratio is the main parameter which controls the inertia effects, the effect of tortuosity on the onset of non-Darcy flow increases when the coordination number of media decreases. In addition, the higher non-Darcy coefficient does not essentially accelerate the onset of inertial flow. The results of this work can help to better understand how the onset of inertial flow may be controlled/changed by the pore architecture of porous media.     

Sphere-boundary edge and sphere-boundary corner contacts model in DDA for simulating particulate media in 3-D

In modelling particulate media, such as soils, using 3-D DDA, there are four types of contacts: sphere to sphere, sphere to boundary face, sphere to boundary edge, and sphere to boundary corner contacts. The first two were studied by the authors in a previous work (Beyabanaki and Bagtzoglou 2012). In this paper, we present a new contact model for sphere-boundary edge and sphere-boundary corner contacts in sphere-based 3-D DDA. The model includes a new algorithm to search for contacts, detect the contact types and calculate contact points. Moreover, formulas for contact sub-matrices are derived. The proposed contact model has been implemented into a sphere-based 3-D DDA program and three test cases are studied in order to verify the workability of the new contact model. The numerical results obtained demonstrate the capability of the model to deal with sphere-boundary interaction in particulate media.