日本MW 9.0级大地震前后华北和东北地区现今构造应力作用调整过程与研究意义探讨

为了探讨日本M_W 9.0级大地震前后华北和东北地区现今构造应力作用调整过程与研究意义,对华北和东北地区进行原位现今地应力绝对测量与实时监测、GPS测量,结果表明：日本大地震在山东半岛、华北北部地区和东北地区所诱发同震位移引起的张性效应调整周期分别约为6个月(即调整结束时间大约在2011年9月)、15个月(即调整结束时间大约在2012年6月)和26个月(即调整结束时间大约在2013年5月),张性效应调整周期与同震位移大小成正比。在这种调整过程中,往往表现出区域现今构造应力作用方式和构造应力场转换,并可能伴随重大地质事件(如地震等)的发生。2012年5月28日和29日、6月18日、8月26日及2013年1月11日在唐山及其周围地区分别发生的4.8级、3.2级、4.0级、3.3级和3.0级地震与华北北部地区构造应力作用方式和构造应力场转换有关,而2013年10月31日以来在吉林省松原市发生的地震群应与东北地区构造应力作用方式和构造应力场转换有关,而非一个大地震前的小震群。     

江苏及邻近地区地震视应力特征研究

采用江苏省数字地震台网记录的地震波形资料,利用震源位移谱低频水平与拐角频率计算了2000~2010年江苏及邻近地区561个ML≥1.5中小地震视应力值。结果显示,江苏及邻近地区的地震视应力平均值为0.91 MPa,与中国大陆的平均水平相当。视应力与震级无明显的线性关系,在震级相对较大时表现出一定的高震级对应高视应力的特点。视应力高值地区主要集中在江苏中部至南黄海海域,次高值集中分布在郯庐断裂带中南段的苏鲁交界地区、安徽段固镇至定远附近地区和肥东、巢湖一带,反映了以上地区较高的地震活动水平及地壳应力状态。不同区域ML2震级档视应力的差异性基本反映了区域地质环境、构造活动等特征的差异。     

喜马拉雅东构造结附近强震对滇西南地区断层的影响研究

以在喜马拉雅东构造结发生的2000年6月7日缅甸MS6.9地震、2011年3月24日缅甸MS7.2地震和2012年11月11日缅甸MS7.0地震作为主要破裂源,计算3次地震震后周围应力的空间变化,给出其对滇西南地区断层造成的静态库仑应力变化的时间影响范围。结果表明:3次地震对滇西南地区活动断层库仑破裂应力变化主要为负值,即受到应力卸载的影响,其中包括大盈江断裂、龙陵—瑞丽断裂、南汀河西支断裂、南汀河东支断裂、孟连—澜沧断裂、打洛—景洪断裂和怒江断裂,量值范围在-0.06~-0.002 bar(1 bar=0.1 MPa),卸载影响最大的断裂为打洛—景洪断裂,为-0.06 bar,木嘎断裂和龙陵—澜沧断裂受到加载的影响,断层的库仑破裂应力分别为+0.002 bar和+0.004 bar。     

Effects of scour-hole dimensions and soil stress history on the behavior of laterally loaded piles in soft clay under scour conditions

Bridge pile foundations in the midst of water current are often subjected to scour, which induces the loss of soil support around the piles and thus results in a significant decrease of foundation capacities or even the failure of bridges. In the current practice, when the scour-affected behavior of the pile foundations is analyzed, either the whole scour-hole geometry or the possible changes in the stress history of the remaining soils is often ignored. In reality, however, scouring creates scour holes with certain dimensions around the pile foundations and the remaining soils that are not scoured away undergo an unloading process at the same time, which will increase the over-consolidation ratios of the remaining soils and accordingly changes of their mechanical properties. This paper examines the behavior of laterally loaded piles in soft clay under scour conditions by using the p-y method. The conventional p-y curves have been modified appropriately to reasonably reflect the effects of three-dimensional scour-hole geometry as well as the stress history of the soils, with the aid of integration of Mindlin’s fundamental solutions. A field test is used to serve as a reference case and to investigate the effects of stress history, scour depth, scour width, and scour-hole slope angle on the responses of laterally loaded piles in soft clay. The results indicate that neglecting the stress history effect can be unconservative for scour-affected pile foundations in soft clay, whereas neglect of the scour-hole dimensions and geometry would lead to over-conservative predictions/design of the laterally loaded piles under scour condition.     

Influence of the intermediate principal stress and principal stress direction on the mechanical behavior of cohesionless soils using the discrete element method

In this paper, the Discrete Element Method (DEM) is employed to numerically explore the response of hollow cylinder specimens of granular soils under complex stress paths. Two series of numerical tests are conducted to clarify the effects of the principal stress direction α and the intermediate principal stress through the b-value on the mechanical response of granular materials. The effects of α and b-value on the non-coaxiality of the principal stress and the principal plastic strain increment directions are investigated. It is observed that b-value and α significantly affect the non-coaxial behavior of granular materials. Finally, the results are discussed and compared with those obtained from physical laboratory tests.     

Cone penetration test in sand: A numerical-analytical approach

Separation of the effects of initial horizontal stress and relative density on cone tip resistance in sandy soils has been a complicated issue for many years. In order to overcome this problem, a numerical modeling of CPT which has been verified by calibration chamber tests, has been used in this paper to achieve a reliable analytical solution. The analytical solution has resulted in two relationships for sleeve friction and cone tip resistance in terms of the initial conditions of sandy soil. Based on the presented solution, the initial horizontal stress and relative density can be determined according to CPT measurements.     

Buckling failures of reserved thin pillars under the combined action of in-plane and lateral hydrostatic compressive forces

The reasons that pillars with small width-to-height ratios fail remain unclear. This study established a mechanical model for the buckling failure of a thin pillar subjected to compressive forces to investigate the stability of reserved thin pillars (RTPs) on both sides of mining units during barrier pillar recovery. The critical buckling stress of the thin pillar was obtained using the energy variational method, and its relationship to the aspect ratio (length-to-width ratio) was investigated. The buckling instability of RTPs can be determined by comparing the RTP stress obtained from numerical simulations with the buckling stress derived from the mechanical model.     

Numerical investigation of the opening effect on the mechanical behaviours in rocks under uniaxial loading using hybrid continuum-discrete element method

Openings including their size, shape and distribution in rock play a significant role in the performance of rock related structures. The well-established knowledge in this area can contribute to the engineering practices, for example, underground space design, planning and optimisation in Civil and Mining Engineering and wellbore stability in Drilling Engineering, among others. Thus, understanding the failure mechanism of rock with openings is theoretically and practically meaningful. Laboratory testing on rock or rock-like materials with openings have been studied extensively in the literature, which, however, primarily focuses on the cracks/fractures. In this paper, a comprehensive numerical study on the effect of non-banded openings, i.e., circular, rectangular, and triangular opening, on the rock mechanical behaviour is performed using a hybrid continuum-discrete element method. It is revealed that the proposed simulation method can reproduce reasonably the crack initiation and propagation, and predict well the change of the mechanical behaviour due to the openings. In addition, the influence of the opening shape and opening ratio (=area of opening/specimen area) on the mechanical behaviour is also investigated.     

A comprehensive study on the parameters setting in smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) method applied to hydrodynamics problems

Smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) is a meshfree, Lagrangian particle method which has advantages in handling solids with extremely large deformation. Like any other numerical methods, cares must be taken to ensure its desirable accuracy and stability through considering several correction techniques in calculation. The selection of values for parameters in those correction approaches is a key step in SPH simulation, which is always difficult for new beginners to deal well with effectively. This paper examines the common inconsistency and instability problems in SPH method and studies its computational efficiency when applied to hydrodynamics problems with material strength like soil column collapse. We analyzed in detail how the correction techniques mitigate these inconsistency and instability problems. Also, the numerical testing results associate with different values for the parameters used in the correction techniques are provided for better understanding the influence of these parameters and for finding out the desirable values. It is found that (1) the SPH method is easily subjected to an inconsistency problem in the boundary area due to the boundary deficiency, and it can be treated well by adopting “virtual particles” contributing to the particle summations. (2) The numerical oscillation in SPH simulation can be mitigated effectively by artificial viscosity with the suggested parameter values. (3) The tension cracking treatment, artificial viscosity and artificial stress work well in removing the tensile instability problem in SPH method. In addition, the nearest neighboring particle searching (NNPS) algorithm, spacing ratio, smoothing length and time step influence the efficiency and accuracy of SPH method significantly. It is shown that SPH method with suggested parameters values can produce a very good result compared with the experimental result.     

A simple method to describe three-dimensional anisotropic failure of soils

In order to describe the anisotropic failure of soils caused by the internal fabric, isotropic failure criterion should be generalized to be anisotropic. This paper achieves the generalization by introducing a simple method, called anisotropic transformed stress method, which apparently differs from the common way. Physical interpretation of this method are analyzed further. Using this method, many existing isotropic criteria can become anisotropic in the same way, and will be expressed by a unified formula finally. To verify this method, anisotropic Unified Strength Criterion is used to predict the peak strength of anisotropic soils in different loading conditions.