Influence and countermeasure of specimen misalignment to small-strain behavior of soft marine clay

Triaxial test with local displacement transducers is an effective technique to obtain the small-strain stiffness of soils. Many previous studies provided feasible solutions for reducing or avoiding potential sources of error in conventional triaxial tests. However, little literature gave out detailed explanations on how to identify those potential errors from the measured testing data and corresponding solutions. Therefore, nowadays, it is still not easy for a new user to gain proficiency in such kind of advanced tests. In this article, by conducting triaxial tests featured with Hall effect transducer on Shanghai soft marine clay, it is found that the influence of the specimen misalignment to the measured small-strain stiffness cannot be neglected. The typical symptom of specimen misalignment, namely the tilting of specimen, was described carefully. An improved connection between top cap and load cell was applied to overcome the problem. The new connection can reduce the disturbance to specimen in terms of both force and displacement. It can be applied to both isotropic and anisotropic consolidated triaxial tests.     

Hydrogeochemical environment of aquifer groundwater in Shanghai and potential hazards to underground infrastructures

Natural Hazards - The Quaternary deposit in the Shanghai region is composed of a layered multi-aquifer-aquitard system (MAAS). The MAAS was formed mainly during the warm geological era over 2.6...     

An AI-based model for describing cyclic characteristics of granular materials

Modelling cyclic behaviour of granular soils under both drained and undrained conditions with a good performance is still a challenge. This study presents a new way of modelling the cyclic behaviour of granular materials using deep learning. To capture the continuous cyclic behaviour in time dimension, the long short-term memory (LSTM) neural network is adopted, which is characterised by the prediction of sequential data, meaning that it provides a novel means of predicting the continuous behaviour of soils under various loading paths. Synthetic datasets of cyclic loading under drained and undrained conditions generated by an advanced soil constitutive model are first employed to explore an appropriate framework for the LSTM-based model. Then the LSTM-based model is used to estimate the cyclic behaviour of real sands, ie, the Toyoura sand under the undrained condition and the Fontainebleau sand under both undrained and drained conditions. The estimates are compared with actual experimental results, which indicates that the LSTM-based model can simultaneously simulate the cyclic behaviour of sand under both drained and undrained conditions, ie, (a) the cyclic mobility mechanism, the degradation of effective stress and large deformation under the undrained condition, and (b) shear strain accumulation and densification under the drained condition.     

Explanation of liquefaction in after shock of the 2011 great east Japan earthquake using numerical analysis

During the 2011 Great East Japan Earthquake, severe liquefaction occurred in reclaimed ground in Urayasu city, Chiba prefecture. This liquefaction provided important lessons for us to re-recognize the liquefaction mechanism. A distinct feature of the liquefaction in this earthquake is that severe liquefaction happened not only in the main shock but also in an aftershock with a maximum acceleration of 25 gal. In some areas, liquefaction happened in the aftershock is even more serious than that happened in the main shock. In this paper, focus is placed on the characteristic features in the occurrence of liquefaction and consequent ground settlement. Based on the observed data, a series of dynamic–static analyses, considering not only the earthquake loading but also static loading during the consolidation after the earthquake shocks, are conducted in a sequential way just the same as the scenario in the earthquake. The calculation is conducted with 3D soil–water coupling finite element–finite difference analyses based on a cyclic elasto-plastic constitutive model. From the results of analyses, it is recognized that small sequential earthquakes, which cannot cause liquefaction of a ground in an independent earthquake vibration, cannot be neglected when the ground has already experienced liquefaction after a major vibration. In addition, the aftershock has great influence on the long-term settlement of low permeability soil layer. The observed and predicted liquefaction and settlements are compared and discussed carefully. It is confirmed that the numerical method used in this study can describe the ground behavior correctly under repeated earthquake shocks.     

Fully coupled numerical analysis of repeated shake-consolidation process of earth embankment on liquefiable foundation

It is known that a series of aftershocks might follow a mainshock, which may cause further damages on civil engineering structures. So it is necessary to investigate the dynamic response of structures undergone several shocks. This study presents a numerical analysis of repeated shake-consolidation process for an earth embankment founded on liquefiable foundation soils. Analysis is carried out using an effective stress-based, fully coupled, finite element method. The behaviors of the foundation soils are described by means of a cyclic mobility constitutive model which was developed at the bases of modified Cam-clay model by introducing concepts such as stress-induced anisotropy, over-consolidation, and structure. Results show that the cyclic mobility constitutive model can reflect the dynamic response of liquefiable soils. Special emphasis is given to analyze the result of excess pore water pressures, stress path, acceleration, and deformations during the two seismic excitation and consolidation process.