Remote sensing of water depths in shallow waters via artificial neural networks

Determination of the water depths in coastal zones is a common requirement for the majority of coastal engineering and coastal science applications. However, production of high quality bathymetric maps requires expensive field survey, high technology equipment and expert personnel. Remotely sensed images can be conveniently used to reduce the cost and labor needed for bathymetric measurements and to overcome the difficulties in spatial and temporal depth provision. An Artificial Neural Network (ANN) methodology is introduced in this study to derive bathymetric maps in shallow waters via remote sensing images and sample depth measurements. This methodology provides fast and practical solution for depth estimation in shallow waters, coupling temporal and spatial capabilities of remote sensing imagery with modeling flexibility of ANN. Its main advantage in practice is that it enables to directly use image reflectance values in depth estimations, without refining depth-caused scatterings from other environmental factors (e.g. bottom material and vegetation). Its function-free structure allows evaluating nonlinear relationships between multi-band images and in-situ depth measurements, therefore leads more reliable depth estimations than classical regressive approaches. The west coast of the Foca, Izmir/Turkey was used as a test bed. Aster first three band images and Quickbird pan-sharpened images were used to derive ANN based bathymetric maps of this study area. In-situ depth measurements were supplied from the General Command of Mapping, Turkey (HGK). Two models were set, one for Aster and one for Quickbird image inputs. Bathymetric maps relying solely on in-situ depth measurements were used to evaluate resultant derived bathymetric maps. The efficiency of the methodology was discussed at the end of the paper. It is concluded that the proposed methodology could decrease spatial and repetitive depth measurement requirements in bathymetric mapping especially for preliminary engineering application.     

Investigation of liquefaction and pore water pressure development in layered sands

This paper presents the results of shaking table model tests which were carried out to investigate the pore water pressure generation and related liquefaction mechanism in layered sand deposits. The experiments were performed on uniform sand columns, silt interlayered sand columns and two layered sand columns deposited at various relative densities and subjected to different input excitations. During the experiments excess pore water pressures were measured by pore pressure transducers installed at three different depths and, surface settlements and thickness of water film developed under less permeable inclusions were measured by a digital camera. The experimental results are discussed and compared to demonstrate the effects of relative density, input acceleration and presence of a silt seam on the generation of excess pore water pressure in sand deposits subjected to dynamic loading. The results showed that the presence of a less permeable silt interlayer within the sand deposit and existence of a loose sand layer underlying dense sand deposits can have significant effect on the pore water pressure generation mechanism.     

An improved earthquake catalogue (<Emphasis Type="Italic">M</Emphasis> ≥ 4.0) for Turkey and its near vicinity (1900–2012)

Many catalogues, agency reports and research articles have been published on seismicity of Turkey and its surrounding since 1950s. Given existing magnitude heterogeneity, erroneous information on epicentral location, event date and time, this past published data however is far from fulfilling the required standards. Paucity of a standardized format in the available catalogues have reinforced the need for a refined and updated catalogue for earthquake related hazard and risk studies. During this study, ~37,000 earthquakes and related parametric data were evaluated by utilizing more than 41 published studies and, an integrated database was prepared in order to analyse all parameters acquired from the catalogues and references for each event. Within the scope of this study, the epicentral locations of M ≥ 5.0 events were firstly reappraised based on the updated Active Fault Map of Turkey. An improved catalogue of 12.674 events for the period 1900–2012 was as a result recompiled for the region between 32–45N° and 23–48E° by analyzing in detail accuracy of all seismological parameters available for each event. The events consist of M ≥ 4.0 are reported in several magnitude scales (e.g. moment magnitude, M_w; surface wave magnitude, M_S; body-wave magnitude m_b; local magnitude M_L and duration magnitude M_d) whereas the maximum focal depth reaches up to 225-km. In order to provide homogenous data, the improved catalogue is unified in terms of M_w. Fore-and aftershocks were also removed from the catalogue and completeness analyses were performed both separately for various tectonic sources and as a whole for the study region of interest. Thus, the prepared homogenous and declustered catalogue consisting of 6573 events provides the basis for a reliable input to the seismic hazard assessment studies for Turkey and its surrounding areas.     

Adaptive neuro-fuzzy modeling for the swelling potential of compacted soils

This paper aims to present the usability of an adaptive neuro fuzzy inference system (ANFIS) for the prediction swelling potential of the compacted soils that are important materials for geotechnical purposes such as engineered barriers for municipal solid waste, earth dams, embankment and roads. In this study the swelling potential that is also one of significant parameters for compacted soils was modeled by ANFIS. For the training and testing of ANFIS model, data sets were collected from the tests performed on compacted soils for different geotechnical application in Nigde. Four parameters such as coarse-grained fraction ratio (CG), fine-grained fraction ratio (FG), plasticity index (PI) and maximum dry density (MDD) were presented to ANFIS model as inputs. The results obtained from the ANFIS models were validated with the data sets which are not used for the training stage. The analyses revealed that the predictions from ANFIS model are in sufficient agreement with test results.     

The Influence of Testing Procedures on Uniaxial Compressive Strength Prediction of Carbonate Rocks from Equotip Hardness Tester (EHT) and Proposal of a New Testing Methodology: Hybrid Dynamic Hardness (HDH)

The Equotip hardness tester (EHT) is a portable and non-destructive instrument used mainly for the dynamic rebound hardness testing of metals. Although various versions of the ‘single impacts’ and ‘repeated impacts’ testing procedures have been employed by different authors for different applications, it is not yet known whether a particular testing procedure is more relevant for a specific application in rock engineering. To be able to contribute to the subject, the present study was carried out to determine the suitability of different rebound testing procedures with this instrument for uniaxial compressive strength (UCS) estimations of some selected carbonate rocks. To achieve this goal, as well as four different existing rebound testing procedures, a newly proposed testing methodology involving the parameter hybrid dynamic hardness (HDH) was also employed. The statistical analyses performed on the experimental data, on the whole, showed that the test procedures which are based on single impacts test procedures outperformed the repeated impacts test procedures in terms of UCS prediction accuracy. The prediction capability of the newly introduced testing methodology was found to be superior to those of other procedures considered in this work, suggesting that it could be an efficient tool in practice for preliminary estimates of rock strength. The statistical analyses also indicated that, in practical applications of the EHT using different test procedures, it may be possible to predict the UCS more accurately when apparent density data is available. For the range of specimen sizes considered, no clear evidence of size effect was observed in the mean rebound values. The argument raised by some other authors that the EHT might not be a convenient instrument for the dynamic rebound hardness determination of relatively high-porosity rocks was not confirmed in this study.     

An improved input energy spectrum verified by the shake table tests

Input energy is the principal component of the energy balance equation. It is beneficial to determine, through its components, how the recoverable and irrecoverable energies are distributed within the structural elements. Several equations and attenuation relations to define mass-normalized input energy spectra exist in the literature. They are mainly proposed for elastic systems subjected to far-fault EQs. There is a lack of experimental verification of these proposed spectra. In this paper, experimental assessment was performed to the existing spectra, and further improvements were accomplished. For this purpose, steel cantilever columns were tested on the shake table for two specific historical EQs coincidently having similar spectral acceleration values. Based on the experimental results, a three-part mass-normalized relative input energy spectrum was formulated including soil type, EQ (corner period, intensity, duration, spectral acceleration, and velocity), and structural behavioral characteristics (period and structural damping). The proposed input energy spectrum was experimentally calibrated and numerically validated for various EQs featuring near- and far-field types. Analytical and experimental comparisons were made between the previously developed spectrum and the newly proposed one. The validation studies and the statistical evaluations exposed that the proposed spectrum yielded better agreement with the experimental and numerical results.