Influence of geocell reinforcement on uplift response of belled piles

Piles are frequently used to transfer the heavy compressive loads to strong soil layers located in the depth of bed. In addition, such piles may be subjected to combination of repeated compressive and tensile loads due to earthquake, wind, etc. This paper describes a series of laboratory model tests, at unit gravity, performed on belled pile, embedded in unreinforced and geocell-reinforced beds. The tests were performed to evaluate the beneficial effect of geocell in decreasing the downward and upward displacements and performance improvement of the uplift response of belled pile under repeated compressive and tensile loads. Pile displacements due to fifty load repetitions were recorded. The influence of the height of geocell above the bell of pile, an additional geocell layer at the base of belled pile, and the number of load cycles on pile displacements were investigated. The test results show that the geocell reinforcement reduces the magnitude of the final upward displacement. It also acts as a displacement retardant, and changes the behaviour of belled pile from unstable response condition due to excessive upward pile displacement in unreinforced bed to approximately steady response condition. Therefore, the geocell reinforcement permits higher tensile loads or increased cycling. The efficiency of reinforcement in reducing the maximum upward displacement of the pile (i.e. pull-out resistance) was increased by increasing the height of geocell above the bell of the pile. Furthermore, the comparison showed that a specific improvement in upward and downward displacement and the stability against uplift can be achieved using an additional geocell layer at the base. The geocell reinforcement may reduce the required length of pile shaft, consequently reducing required excavation, backfill, and pile’s material. Simple dimensional analysis showed the need for an increased stiffness of the geosynthetic components in order to match prototype-scale performance similitude.     

A GIS-based comparative study of hybrid fuzzy-gene expression programming and hybrid fuzzy-artificial neural network for land subsidence susceptibility modeling

Stochastic Environmental Research and Risk Assessment - Land subsidence is a complicated hazard that artificial intelligence models can model it without approximation and simplification. In this...     

Land subsidence risk assessment using GIS fuzzy logic spatial modeling in Varamin aquifer,Iran

GeoJournal - The extent of the subsidence and the consequents damage to most of the residential and populated areas of Iran have made this phenomenon one of the most important natural hazards after...     

Designing a model for organizing volunteer personnel in disasters and emergencies in Tehran’s hospitals: an integrated approach of Fuzzy Delphi and interpretative structure modeling (ISM)

Natural Hazards - Organization of volunteer personnel and proper management of these enormous and valuable human resources to make that most of their scientific, experiential, physical, and...     

CFD modeling of the launder of settler of an industrial copper solvent extraction plant: A case study on Sarcheshmeh copper complex,Iran

In this study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) modeling accompanied by experimental field measurements has been applied to study the behavior of aqueous–organic dispersion on the performance of the launder of the settler of the copper solvent extraction plant at the Sarcheshmeh copper complex, Iran. Fluid flow field has been calculated by solving the continuity and Navier Stokes equations along with the standard k-ε turbulence model. The simulation results have been compared with the field measurements data to check the accuracy of the CFD work. The effects of picket fence on the launder performance and pressure drop over the picket fences in the launder have been investigated. The model predicts that by setting the picket fences, flow pattern becomes uniform, and turbulent eddies disappear. The results also show that by installing two picket fences without dam in the launder, the phase separation is improved and the performance of the launder is optimized.     

Multiple failure function based fragility curves for structures equipped with TMD

This paper presents a procedure to develop fragility curves of structures equipped with TMD considering multiple failure functions.The failure criteria considered are maximum inter-story drift ratio as a safety criterion,maximum absolute acceleration as a convenience criterion and TMD stroke length.The relationship between intensity measure and responses of the structure was assumed to follow the power-law model,and a regression analysis was used to estimate its properties.A nonlinear eight-story shear building subjected to near-fault earthquakes was used for the numerical studies.Fragility curves using multiple and single failure functions for an uncontrolled structure and a structure equipped with optimal TMDs were developed.Numerical analysis showed that using multiple failure functions led to increasing the fragility when compared with using the single failure function for both the uncontrolled and controlled structures.However,TMDs slightly reduced the seismic fragility and have the capability to improve the reliability of the structure.Also,it was found that the fragility was significantly influenced by the values of the capacity thresholds of both the acceleration of the structure and TMD stroke length,which should be selected by considering the target performance and application of the structure and control device.     

Analysis of repeated-load laboratory tests on buried plastic pipes in sand

This paper describes a laboratory model test carried out on high-density polyethylene (HDPE), small diameter pipes buried in trenches, which subjected to repeated loadings to simulate the vehicle loads. Deformation of the pipe was recorded at eight points on the circumference of the tested pipes to measure the radial deformations and detect cross-sectional pipe profiles. Also settlement of the soil surface during the test up to 1000 cycles of loadings was recorded, until its value become stable or the excessive settlement was happened. The parameters varied in the testing program include height of buried depth, relative density of the sand and intensity of stress on the soil surface. The influence of various repeated loads (with magnitude of 250, 400 and 550 kPa) at relative densities of 42%, 57% and 72% in different embedded depth of 1.5–3 times of pipe diameter were investigated. Based on the results, in medium and dense sand relative density, the pipe embedded in depth of 3.0D and 2.0D, respectively, mostly remained undamaged (the maximum value of VDS is less than 5%) and increased the safety of buried pipes under different magnitude of repeated loads. The records of the pipe deformation and settlement of the soil surface due to the repeated loads have been compared in different conditions. These values increase rapidly during the initial loading cycles by a rate decreasing significantly as the number of cycles increase. The influence of the first cycle was also found to be one of the main behavioral characteristics of buried pipes under repeated loads. The ratio of deformation of pipe at first cycle to last cycle changes from 0.60 to 0.85 in different of tests. Finally for the obtained results, a non-linear power model has been developed to estimate the vertical diametral strain of buried pipe and settlement of the soil surface based on the model test data. It should be noted that only one type of pipe and one type of sand are used in laboratory tests.     

Pushover analysis of asymmetric-plan buildings based on distribution of the combined modal story shear and torsional moment

A pushover procedure with a load pattern based on the height-wise distribution of the combined modal story shear and torsional moment is proposed to estimate the seismic response of 3D asymmetric-plan building frames. Contribution of the higher modes and torsional response of asymmetric-plan buildings are incorporated into the proposed load pattern. The proposed pushover method is a single-run procedure, which enables tracing the nonlinear response of the structure during the analysis and averts the elusiveness of conducting multiple pushover analyses. The proposed method has been used to estimate the response of two moment-resisting building frames with 9 and 20 stories. The obtained results indicate the appropriate accuracy and efficiency of the proposed procedure in estimating the trend of the drift profiles of the structures resulted from nonlinear time history analyses.