Unlike conventional grouted micropiles, screw micropiles have been recently introduced to the foundation industry. Full-scale field tests of screw micropiles were carried out at a cohesive soil site. The screw micropiles have a diameter varying from 76 to 114 mm and a length varying from 1.6 to 3 m, and spiral threads welded on the lower half of the steel tubular shaft. Site investigation from cone penetration tests (CPT) and laboratory testing implies that the soil was medium to stiff, low plasticity clay. Six axial monotonic and three axial cyclic load tests were performed on three micropiles. One micropile was instrumented with strain gauges to investigate the shaft load distribution during loading. The axial cyclic loading was intended to simulate cyclic inertia load during vertical ground motions. Results showed that the micropiles behave as frictional piles during monotonic tests; the unit shaft resistance and adhesion coefficient were calculated and compared with results in the literature. The end installation torque was estimated using CPT shaft resistance and was shown to agree reasonably with the measured torque. Under axial cyclic loading, the micropiles underwent small cumulative displacements and the magnitude of the displacement decreased with increasing pile length and diameter. Cyclic loading redistributed the load transfer along different segments of the micropile. Negative skin resistance was observed along the smooth pile shaft when the pile underwent decreasing axial loading.
We report the presence of a Grenvillian ophiolite on the northern margin of the Yangtze craton, drastically changing current ideas about South China's role in plate reconstructions of the Rodinia supercontinent. Strongly deformed amphibolites that locally show relict pillow lavas, isotropic and layered metagabbro, diabase dikes, serpentinized dunite and harzburgite with podiform chromite are dated at circa 1100–985 Ma (U–Pb zircon). The ophiolite is structurally dismembered and thrust over the Proterozoic shelf sequence that covers the north margin of the Yangtze craton, and overrode a flysch to conglomerate-wildflysch unit shed from the ophiolite and a magmatic arc terrane and deposited on the older Yangtze carbonate platform. The youngest clasts in the conglomerate are circa 861–813 Ma (U–Pb zircon), giving a maximum age for ophiolite emplacement. Fine-grained layered amphibolites exhibit slightly depleted-flat type REE curves with no obvious Eu anomalies, and are N-MORB type tholeiites. Metagabbro has typical cumulate textures, flat REE distributions and obvious positive Eu anomalies. The REE characteristics of serpentinized dunites show a U-shape of slight loss of middle REE, representing cumulates metasomatized by LREE slightly enriched mantle. All these features indicate that the metamafic–ultramafic rocks from the Proterozoic Miaowan Formation form a structurally dismembered ophiolite resting above an ophiolitic wildflysch, sitting on top of the Proterozoic shelf sequence on the Yangtze craton. The ophiolite is contemporaneous with an arc sequence preserved to the north on the edge of the Yangtze craton, suggesting that the entire ophiolitic forearc–arc was accreted to the Yangtze craton between 1000 and 850 Ma. Xenocrystic zircons in granite clasts in the basal wildflysch unit have ages consistent with Australian affinity, and detrital zircons in the arc sequence also show derivation from Australia, suggesting that the arc formed on the Australian segment of Rodinia before collision with the Yangtze craton. The discovery of the Proterozoic Miaowan ophiolite supplies important evidence for the existence of a Neoproterozoic oceanic basin on the north margin of the Yangtze craton, and demonstrates that the Yangtze craton first collided with Rodinia on its northern margin, with subsequent accretion of the Cathaysian block on the southern margin of the craton. 相似文献