Numerical simulations of landslide-stabilizing piles: a remediation project in Söke,Turkey

A catastrophic landslide following a rainy season occurred in the backyard of a school building in Söke, Turkey. The landslide caused property damage and adversely affected the present forest cover. Immediately after the landslide, double-row stabilizing piles were designed and constructed based on the findings of two-dimensional (2D) finite element (FE) analyses to take an urgent precaution. To remedy the problem, pile displacements were monitored using inclinometers, and it was observed that the measured displacements were greater than the values calculated in the design stage. Accordingly, two different three-dimensional (3D) numerical FE models were used in tandem with the inclinometer data to determine the load transfer mechanism. In the first model, numerical analyses were made to predict the pile displacements, and while the model predicted successfully the displacement of the piles constructed in the middle with reasonable accuracy, it failed for the corner piles. In the second model, the soil load transfer between piles was determined considering the sliding mass geometry, the soil arching mechanism and the group interaction between adjacent piles. The results of the second model revealed that the middle piles with large displacements transferred their loads to the corner piles with smaller displacements. The generated soil loads, perpendicular to the sliding direction, restricted pile deformations and piles with less displacement were subjected to greater loads due to the bowl-shaped landslide. A good agreement between the computed pile displacements and inclinometer data indicates that the existing soil pressure theories should be improved considering the position of the pile in the sliding mass, the depth and deformation modulus of stationary soil, the relative movement between the soil and piles and the relative movement of adjacent piles.     

Late Cenozoic deformation in the South Caspian region: effects of a rigid basement block within a collision zone

Active deformation in the South Caspian region demonstrates the enormous variation in kinematics and structural style generated where a rigid basement block lies within a collision zone. Rigid basement to the South Caspian Basin moves with a westward component relative both to stable Eurasia and Iran, and is beginning to subduct at its northern and western margins. This motion is oblique to the approximately north–south Arabia–Eurasia convergence, and causes oblique shortening to the south and northeast of the South Caspian Basin: thrusting in the Alborz and Kopet Dagh is accompanied by range-parallel strike–slip faults, which are respectively left- and right-lateral. There are also arcuate fold and thrust belts in the region, for two principal reasons. Firstly, weaker regions deform and wrap around the rigid block. This occurs at the curved transition zone between the Alborz and Talysh ranges, where thrust traces are concave towards the foreland. Secondly, a curved fold and thrust belt can link a deformation zone created by movement of the basement block to one created by the regional convergence: west-to-east thrusts in the eastern Talysh represent underthrusting of the South Caspian basement, but pass via an arcuate fan of fold trains into SSW-directed thrusts in the eastern Greater Caucasus, which accommodates part of the Arabia–Eurasia convergence. Each part of the South Caspian region contains one or more detachment levels, which vary dependent on the pre-Pliocene geology. Buckle folds in the South Caspian Basin are detached from older rocks on thick mid-Tertiary mudrocks, whereas thrust sheets in the eastern Greater Caucasus detach on Mesozoic horizons. In the future, the South Caspian basement may be largely eliminated by subduction, leading to a situation similar to Archaean greenstone belts of interthrust mafic and sedimentary slices surrounded by the roots of mountain ranges constructed from continental crust.     

The evolution of an electrical fittings industrial cluster in Pakistan

GeoJournal - This study provides an evolution process of electrical fittings industrial cluster in Pakistan by using two rounds of survey dataset (2008 and 2017) taken from the electrical fittings...     

Spatial variability of climatic hazards in Bangladesh

Natural Hazards - Climate change is evident with the extreme climatic indices changing all over the world. Bangladesh is one of the most vulnerable countries to climate change. The patterns of...     

A cost-effective device and methodology to compute aquifer transmissivity and piezometry from free-flowing artesian wells

Artesian aquifers offer interesting opportunities for water supply by providing a low-vulnerability groundwater resource that is easily abstracted without any installation of pumps or power supply costs. However, hydraulic tests are challenging to perform, notably where the piezometric head is above ground level with free-flowing wells not equipped with valves and open for years. This paper describes a low-cost, easy to reproduce and adaptable device, the free-flowing artesian well device (FFAWD), which is mainly designed with a set of PVC tubes equipped with a pressure probe and a valve. This device is used to perform hydraulic tests on free-flowing artesian wells, to measure the piezometric head of the aquifer and to compute its transmissivity. The practical use of the FFAWD is described and a method is proposed to compute the piezometric head and the transmissivity of the aquifer from this data set (free-flowing well discharge and pressure increase measurements) with any adapted analytical solution, using the Houpeurt-Pouchan method. Artefacts such as post-production effects, surge effects, and the impact of a leaky well are identified to avoid any misinterpretation. The FFAWD was applied to the volcano-sedimentary artesian plain of Pasuruan (Indonesia). The advantages and limitations of using the device, along with the interpretation methodology, are also discussed.

     

MINERALOGY AND GEOCHEMISTRY OF ULTRAMAFIC ROCKS FROM THE INDUS SUTURE OPHIOLITE IN SWAT, NW PAKISTAN

MINERALOGY AND GEOCHEMISTRY OF ULTRAMAFIC ROCKS FROM THE INDUS SUTURE OPHIOLITE IN SWAT, NW PAKISTAN1　BeccaluvaL ,MacciottaG ,PiccardoGB ,etal.PetrologyoflherzoliticrocksfromthenorthernApennineophiolites[J] .Lithos,1984 ,17:2 99～ 316 . 2　HartmannG ,WedepohlKH .ThecompositionofperidotitetectonitesfromtheIvreacomplex ,northernItaly:residuesfrommeltextraction[J] .GeochimCosmochActa ,1993,57:176 1～ 1782 . 3　JaquesAL ,ChappellBW .Petrologya…     

Modelling the formation of individual galaxies: A morphology problem for CDM?

We use a semi-analytic model of halo formation to study the dynamical history of giant field galaxies like the Milky Way. We find that in a concordance LCDM cosmology, most isolated disk galaxies have remained undisturbed for 8–10 Gyr, such that the age of the Milky Way's thin disk is unremarkable. Many systems also have older disk components which have been thickened by minor mergers, consistent with recent observations of nearby field galaxies. We do have a considerable problem, however, reproducing the morphological mix of nearby galaxies. In our fiducial model, most systems have disk-to-bulge mass ratios of order 1, and look like S0s rather than spirals. This result depends mainly on merger statistics, and is unchanged for most reasonable choices of our model parameters. We discuss two possible solutions to this morphology problem in LCDM. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Artificial neural networks for predicting DGPS carrier phase and pseudorange correction

Artificial neural networks (ANNs) were used to predict the differential global positioning system (DGPS) pseudorange and carrier phase correction information. Autoregressive moving average (ARMA) and autoregressive (AR) models were bounded with neural networks to provide predictions of the correction. The neural network was employed to realize time-varying implementation. Online training for real-time prediction of the carrier phase enhances the continuity of service of the differential correction signals and, therefore, improves the positioning accuracy. When the correction signal from the DGPS was lost, the artificial neural networks predicted the correction data with good accuracy for the navigation system during a limited period. Comparisons of the prediction results using the two models are given.