非均质土坝稳定性的渗流场和应力场耦合分析

綦于多孔介质的渗流特性和土的非线性本构关系，研究了渗流场与应力场的耦合效应，并针对一实际十坝建立了非线性耦合分析模型，探讨了位于软基之上的非均质土坝的渗流与应力耦合规律。分析结果表明，在渗流作用下，坝休和坝基中渗流与应力的相互作用是不应忽视的，其作用结果将会使土坝、特别足防渗心端附近应力水平和渗透坡降均有不同程度的提高，表明考虑渗流场和应力场耦合作用的计算结果对土坝稳定安全性不利。     

重金属迁移转化模型研究

大量重金属污染物迁移转化的现象和研究成果都表明重金属以泥沙颗粒为载体迁移转化,描述重金属在天然水体中的迁移转化必须紧紧抓住泥沙颗粒运动及重金属与泥沙之间的转化关系进行.为此在对现有的重金属迁移转化数学模型进行概括分类的基础上,根据水沙运动与污染物相互作用关系,分析了泥沙颗粒运动及重金属吸附解吸不平衡过程,并结合水沙数学模型,建立了重金属迁移转化的耦合模型.同时在模型合理性分析的基础上,对模型进行了计算分析,分析表明模型能够合理地反映重金属污染物在水体中的迁移转化过程.     

In the Critical Zone: Geography at the U.S. Geological Survey

Geography is again becoming an integral part of the premier natural‐science agency of the federal government. Geographic research emphasizes the surface of the earth, a portion of the earth system that the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) defines as the “critical zone.” Although geography was part of the USGS from the creation of the agency, in recent years geography in the agency has largely been limited to topographic mapping. Recently, the USGS and an advisory committee of the National Research Council (NRC) reviewed the role of geography at the Survey. The committee's report, along with ongoing decision‐making in the federal government, is likely to reshape geography in the USGS. The newly defined USGS has a regional structure and four disciplines: geology, hydrology, biology, and geography. The NRC report emphasizes the need for the creation of a spatial database called the National Map to replace the existing series of paper topographic maps. The report also outlines the need for geographic research in geographic information science (GIScience), nature‐society connections, and bridging of science to decision‐making. The NRC report has been briefed throughout the USGS, in the federal executive branch, and in Congress. The changing role for geography in the USGS requires change in the agency culture, revised budgetary decisions, and the establishment of a long‐term core agenda for research. Academic geographers will need to prepare a new generation of geographers for participation in the USGS and similar agencies.     

Multifield coupling model and its applications for pile foundation in permafrost

In the construction of Qinghai-Tibet railway,to avoid diseases caused by frost heave and thaw col-lapse of frozen ground,besides the normal bridges over the rivers,a lot of dry bridge structures have been built to replace subgrade in the regions of high tem-perature and high ice content frozen soil.So,the problems on forming mechanism of bearing capacity of pile foundation in cold regions already become one of hot spot problems in frozen soil engineering.Freezing force and frost heave force ar…     

Influence of transducer-ground coupling on vibration measurements

Various methods of transducer mounting provide varying degrees of coupling between the transducer and the measurement surface. The influence of four of these methods on vibration measurements was studied. For this purpose, the first transducer was placed freely on a horizontal surface, the second one was 'sandbagged', the third one was 'spiked' and the fourth one was completely buried in soil. These transducers were mounted side by side and ground vibrations were monitored for 14 blasts at an opencast coal mine.

Ground vibrations in terms of peak particle velocity, peak vector sum and frequency with different mounting methods were analysed. Assuming the data of the buried transducer as the most acceptable one, relative values of other transducers were determined and plotted. For the given tolerance for instrumental and human errors, anomalous readings were found in some cases. The waveforms of the buried transducer were then compared with those of others. Clear distortion in the waveforms or a very low correlation coefficient between two waveforms was suspected poor coupling.

The results indicate that decoupling is most likely with the surface transducer. However, the sandbagged and spiked transducers are also prone to decoupling. Decoupling can result in higher or lower ground vibration. Therefore, burial should be the preferred method for mounting of transducers in soil.     

Implicit integration under mixed controls of a breakage model for unsaturated crushable soils

This paper discusses a series of stress point algorithms for a breakage model for unsaturated granular soils. Such model is characterized by highly nonlinear coupling terms introduced by breakage‐dependent hydro‐mechanical energy potentials. To integrate accurately and efficiently its constitutive equations, specific algorithms have been formulated using a backward Euler scheme. In particular, because implementation and verification of unsaturated soil models often require the use of mixed controls, the incorporation of various hydro‐mechanical conditions has been tackled. First, it is shown that the degree of saturation can be replaced with suction in the constitutive equations through a partial Legendre transformation of the energy potentials, thus changing the thermomechanical state variables and enabling a straightforward implementation of a different control mode. Then, to accommodate more complex control scenarios without redefining the energy potentials, a hybrid strategy has been used, combining the return mapping scheme with linearized constraints. It is shown that this linearization strategy guarantees similar levels of accuracy compared with a conventional strain–suction‐controlled implicit integration. In addition, it is shown that the use of linearized constraints offers the possibility to use the same framework to integrate a variety of control conditions (e.g., net stress and/or water‐content control). The convergence profiles indicate that both schemes preserve the advantages of implicit integration, that is, asymptotic quadratic convergence and unconditional stability. Finally, the performance of the two implicit schemes has been compared with that of an explicit algorithm with automatic sub‐stepping and error control, showing that for the selected breakage model, implicit integration leads to a significant reduction of the computational cost. Such features support the use of the proposed hybrid scheme also in other modeling contexts, especially when strongly nonlinear models have to be implemented and/or validated by using non‐standard hydro‐mechanical control conditions. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.