Reliability based risk index for the design of reinforced earth structures

The design methods currently used for earth reinforcement are mostly based on deterministic properties of both the soil and the construction materials used. Nowadays, however, the general trend is designing at a specific degree of reliability. This is even more true where the raw data such as soil properties exhibit significant variation. Deterministic solutions, in this case, may not suffice. Therefore, this paper will attempt to use probabilistic formulations thereby modifying the existing design procedure of reinforced earth retaining walls to account for uncertainties and variabilities. Through a first order Taylor's series expansion about the mean, the mean and variance of the strip reinforcing components, namely width and length, are derived in terms of the variations in the soil properties. Design charts that enable estimation of both mean and variance are developed to avoid extensive partial differentiation involved in the computations. Using appropriate probability distributions along with the mean and variance, the final design outputs are determined for a selected failure probability by introducing what is refered to as 'risk index'. The results indicate that the risk index increases with an increase in the coefficient of variations and a decrease in failure probability. Furthermore, it is shown that in some cases, depending on the variabilities of the soil properties, the classical design technique produced a relatively high failure probability. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Surface analysis of pyrite in the No. 9 coal seam, Wuda Coalfield, Inner Mongolia, China, using high-resolution time-of-flight secondary ion mass-spectrometry

The chemical composition of pyrite in coal can be used to investigate its geological and mineralogical origin. In this paper, high-resolution time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS) was used to study the chemical composition of various pyrite forms in the No. 9 coal seam (S_t,d=3.46%) from the Wuda Coalfield, Inner Mongolia, northern China. These include bacteriogenic, framboidal, massive, cell-filling, fracture-filling, and nodular pyrites. In addition to Fe⁺ (⁵⁴Fe⁺, ⁵⁶Fe⁺, ⁵⁷Fe⁺), other fragment ions were detected in bacteriogenic pyrites, such as ²⁷Al⁺, Si⁺ (²⁸Si⁺, ²⁹Si⁺, ³⁰Si⁺), ⁴⁰Ca⁺, Cu⁺ (⁶³Cu⁺, ⁶⁵Cu⁺), Zn⁺ (⁶⁴Zn⁺, ⁶⁶Zn⁺, ⁶⁷Zn⁺, ⁶⁸Zn⁺), Ni⁺ (⁵⁸Ni⁺, ⁶⁰Ni⁺, ⁶²Ni⁺), and C₃H₇⁺. TOF-SIMS images show bacteriogenic pyrites are relatively rich in Cu, Zn, and Ni, suggesting that bacteria probably play an important role in the enrichment of Cu, Zn, and Ni during their formation. Intense positive secondary ion fragments from framboidal aggregates, such as ²⁷Al⁺, ²⁸Si⁺, ²⁹Si⁺, AlO⁺, CH₂⁺, C₃H₃⁺, C₃H₅⁺, and C₄H₇⁺, indicate that formation of the framboidal aggregates may have occurred together with clay mineral and organic matter, which probably serve as the binding substance. The intense ions of ²⁸Si⁺ and ²⁷Al⁺ from massive pyrites also suggest that their pores incorporated clay minerals during crystallization. Together with the lowest ²⁸Si⁺/²³Na⁺ value, the intense organic positive secondary ion peaks from cell-filling pyrites, such as C₃H₃⁺, C₃H₅⁺, C₃H₇⁺, and C₄H₇⁺, indicate that pyrite formation may have accompanied dissolution or disintegration of the cell. The intense P⁺ peak was observed only in the fracture-filling pyrite and the highest ²⁸Si⁺/²³Na⁺ value of fracture-filling pyrite reflects its epigenetic origin. Together with XRD and REEs data, the stronger ⁴⁰Ca⁺ in nodular pyrite than other pyrite forms shows seawater influence during its formation.     

Theoretical Study on Stochastic Modeling of Combined Gravity-Magnetic-Electric-Seismic Inversion and Its Application

As gravity field,magnetic field,electric field and seismic wave field are all physical fields,their object function,reverse function and compound function are certainly infinite contiuously differentiable func-tions which can be expanded into Taylor (Fourier) series within domain of definition and be further reduced in-to solving stochastic distribution function of series and statistic inference of optimal approximation,This is the basis of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion built on the basis of separation of field and source gravity-magnetic difference-value(D-value)trend surface,taking distribution-independent fault sys-tem as its unit,depths of seismic and electric interfaces of interests as its corresponding bivariate compound re-verse function of gravity-magnetic anomalies and using high order polynomial(high order trigonometric func-tion)approximating to its series distribution,The difference from current dominant inversion techniques is that,first,it does not respectively create gravity-seismic,magnetic-seismic deterministic inversion model from theoretical model,but combines gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic stochastic inversion model from stochastic model;second,after the concept of equivalent geological body being introduced,using feature of independent variable of gravity-magnetic field functions,taking density and susceptibility related to gravity-magnetic func-tion as default parameters of model,the deterministic model is established owing to better solution to the con-tradictioc of difficulty in identifying strata and less test analytical data for density and susceptibility in newly explored area;third,under assumption of independent parent distribution,a real modeling by strata,the prob-lem of difficult plane closure arising in profile modeling is avoided,This technology has richer and more detailed fault and strata information than sparse pattern seismic data in newly explored area,successfully inverses and plots structural map of Indosinian discontinuty in Hefei basin with combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion,With development of high precision gravity-magnetic and overall geophysical technology,it is certain for introducing new methods of stochastic modeling and computational intelligence and promoting the develop-ment of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion to open a new substantial and promoting the develop-ment of combined gravity-magnetic-electric-seismic inversion to open a new substantial path.     

用非线性多因子动态组合方法作降水概率预报

将逐时段定点降水预报这个以往一般作为非连续量处理的预报问题转化为对一个连续的降水可能函数的预报问题。降水可能函数为一由实况值确定的函数。因为现在模式变化较快，且许多因子和降水可能函数为非线性关系，文章采用一种新的非线性多因子动态组合方法，通过对降水可能函数的预报，作客观分站降水概率预报。     

地震预测的构造物理模型研究

在系统收集和分析中国大陆的活动构造、地震活动和地球物理场资料的基础上，初步圈定出769个构造物理潜在震源，并对其中477个位于主要强震区、带内的潜在震源进行了空间几何定量描述和基本震源参数的系统分析，在GIS平台上开发了分析系统，逐一计算了每一潜在震源的十年发震概率，圈定了1999～2008年的强震危险区，根据发震概率的大小对危险区的危险性进行分类。近几年发生的强震与预测结果的对比检验结果表明，用构造物理模型确定的十年地震危险区具有较好的预测效果。     

古潜山火成岩裂缝带划分与孔隙度计算

针对火成岩岩性成分复杂，常规测井难以正确划分岩性，严重阻碍了储层参数的定量计算。本文提出模糊聚类划分岩性，采用综合概率法与混合体积模型计算裂缝孔隙度、有效孔隙度等参数。其测井解释结果与井壁取心和地质描述资料对照，完全吻合。     

地球物理反问题中的随机反演理论

本文从最大后验概率密度观点出发，在数据噪音向量和待求模型向量为具有零均值的独立高斯随机过程的假设前提下，建立起了随机反演的非线性系统方程；给出了模型方差估计的函数表达式，并在文章最后，证明了反演解的稀疏性，即解释了随机反演的输出解的高分辨率特征。文章在最小二乘反演方法的基础上，发展并完善了随机反演方法的理论基础；揭示了随机反演方法与最小二乘反演方法之间的本质区别；阐述了随机反演方法的优越性，并指出了其广阔的应用前景。     

城市地震影响特征研究

首先根据历史地震目录，计算了我国34个省会城市所受到的历史地震影响. 这些城市的地震影响烈度分布特征表明，约53%的省会城市没有遭受过Ⅵ度以上的历史地震影响，遭受过Ⅶ~Ⅸ度影响的城市有44%；大部分城市Ⅵ度地震影响的发生频次均高于Ⅵ度以上地震影响；不同城市最大发生频次的地震影响烈度也不同. 为此，在确定城市地震防御烈度时，需综合考虑最大影响烈度和最频影响烈度. 本文还考虑到历史地震记录的不完备性，以福建省69个县级以上城市为研究对象，采用模拟地震目录的方法来研究城市地震影响的特征. 结果表明，不同超越概率水平下城市地震影响烈度在不同城市之间表现出较大变化，以50年超越概率2%作为城市特征地震影响烈度，可以作为城市地震防御烈度确定的依据，并据此对城市未来地震影响进行合理的描述.      

中国周边地区强震与中国大陆7级以上地震活动的关系

通过对中国周边地区强震与中国大陆地区强震活动的关系分析，发现中国大陆周边地区活跃时段期间和其后3年是中国大陆地区7级以上地震活动的主要活动时期，周边地区强震活动增强后，中国大陆内部有可能发生7级以上地震，强震活动可能会逐步进入高潮，南北地震带中段未来数年发生7级以上地震的危险性较大．