A Graphical Analysis-based Method for Undrained Cylindrical Cavity Expansion in Modified Cam Clay Soil

A novel graphical analysis-based method is proposed for analysing the responses of a cylindrical cavity expanding under undrained conditions in modified Cam Clay soil. The essence of developing such an approach is to decompose and represent the strain increment/rate of a material point graphically into the elastic and plastic components in the deviatoric strain plane. It allows the effective stress path in the deviatoric plane to be readily determined by solving a first-order differential equation with the Lode angle being the single variable. The desired limiting cavity pressure and pore pressure can be equally conveniently evaluated, through basic numerical integrations with respect to the mean effective stress. Some ambiguity is clarified between the generalized (work conjugacy-based) shear strain increments and the corresponding deviatoric invariants of incremental strains. The present graph-based approach is also applicable for the determination of the stress and pore pressure distributions around the cavity. When used for predicting the ultimate cavity/pore pressures, it is computationally advantageous over the existing semi-analytical solutions that involve solving a system of coupled governing differential equations for the effective stress components. It thus may serve potentially as a useful and accurate interpretation of the results of in-situ pressuremeter tests on clay soils.

Numerical investigation of the monotonic drained lateral behaviour of large diameter rigid piles in medium dense uniform sand

This paper presents a numerical investigation of the monotonic lateral response of large diameter monopiles in drained sand with configurations typical of those employed to support offshore wind turbines. Results from new centrifuge tests using instrumented monopiles in uniform dry sand deposits are first presented and used to illustrate the suitability of an advanced hypoplastic constitutive model to represent the sand in finite element analyses of the experiments. These analyses are then extended to examine the influence of pile diameter and loading eccentricity on the lateral response of rigid monopiles. The results show no dependency of suitably normalized lateral load transfer curves on the pile diameter and loading eccentricity. It is also shown that, in a given uniform sand, the profile with depth of net soil pressure at ultimate lateral capacity is independent of the pile diameter because of the insensitivity of the depth to the rotation centre for a rigid pile. A normalization method is subsequently proposed which unifies the load-deflection responses of different diameter rigid piles at a given load eccentricity.

Effects of bio-chemo-mechanical processes on the properties of contaminated marine sediments

A detailed multi-scale investigation of the geotechnical, chemical and mineralogical properties was conducted on contaminated sediment samples collected within the Mar Piccolo, a marine basin in south of Italy. The basin is located close to one of the most important industrial sites in Europe also declared ‘at high risk of environmental crisis’ and prioritised for remediation activities. A multidisciplinary investigation campaign showed that the samples collected close to the seafloor are characterized by high values of both heavy metals and organic pollutants and by the presence of significant amount of organic matter. Several samples in the top layer exhibited peculiar geotechnical properties, in terms of plasticity and activity indexes, compressibility and hydraulic permeability. While the prime suspect for such unconventional behaviour was the chemo-mechanical coupling between soil skeleton and contaminants, it turned out that the biogeochemical degradation of organic matter and the presence of microfossils and diatoms is likely to affect significantly the micro to macro behaviour of polluted marine sediments.

Effects of embedding depth and load eccentricity on lateral response of offshore monopiles in dense sand: A centrifuge study

Two model piles with outer diameter D = 50 mm are loaded laterally at 100×g in a large-beam geotechnical centrifuge. The normal strains on both the tensile and compressive sides are measured using fibre Bragg gratings. An incremental method is introduced to define the pivot point. The testing and analytical program enables the effect of the embedding depth and load eccentricity to be quantified. The key findings are as follows. 1) The piles generate asymmetric tensile and compressive strains during bending, and the tension-compression asymmetry becomes more pronounced at the pile toe and for shorter piles. 2) The piles transition from flexure to rotation as the embedding depth is decreased from 9D to 3D, where the uniqueness of the ground-level rotation and deflection (θg–yg) relationship disappears. 3) The reaction and deflection (P–y) relationship flattens with increasing embedding depth but seems independent of the load eccentricity.

Experimental Study on Gasketed Bell and Spigot Joint Behaviour of Lined-Corrugated HDPE Pipe Subjected to Normal Fault

Although structural response of pipelines has been studied in relation to different geohazards, few studies have focused on the behaviour of flexible pipeline joints. In this paper, the response of a bell and spigot joint in a 600 mm diameter lined-corrugated High Density Polyethylene (HDPE) pipe was investigated under the differential ground movements imposed using a facility that simulates a normal fault. Two experiments were undertaken in this facility. In the first experiment, the kinematic responses of the pipe joint (i.e. axial, shear displacements and rotational angles) were measured using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) and string potentiometers. Strains were also monitored using optical fibres. In the second experiment, the pipe was sealed and leakage of the joint was captured through monitoring of internal vacuum pressure of the pipe. The results show that axial shortening, rotational angle and shear displacement of the pipe joint increased with increasing fault offsets. The joint began to leak when axial shortening, rotational angle and shear displacement of the pipe joint were 0.65 mm, 0.44° and 3.40 mm, respectively, and the joint clearly lost its functionality when those values were 0.85 mm, 0.58° and 4.32 mm.

Probabilistic failure envelopes of strip foundations on soils with non-stationary characteristics of undrained shear strength

This paper investigates probabilistic failure envelopes of strip foundations on spatially variable soils with profiles of undrained shear strength su linearly increasing with depth using the lower bound random finite element limit analysis. The spatially variable su is characterised by a non-stationary random field with linearly increasing mean and constant coefficient of variation (COV) with depth. The deterministic uniaxial capacities and failure envelopes are firstly derived to validate numerical models and provide a reference for the subsequent probabilistic analysis. Results indicate that the random field parameters COVsu (COV of su) and Δ (dimensionless autocorrelation distance) have a considerable effect on the probabilistic normalised uniaxial capacities which alters the size of probabilistic failure envelopes. However, COVsu and Δ have an insignificant effect on the shape of probabilistic failure envelopes is observed in the V-H, V-M and H-M loading spaces, such that failure envelopes for different soil variabilities can be simply scaled by the uniaxial capacities. In contrast to COVsu and Δ, the soil strength heterogeneity index κ = μkB/μsu0 has the lowest effect on the probabilistic normalised uniaxial capacity factors but the highest effect on the shape of the probabilistic failure envelopes. A series of expressions are proposed to describe the shape of deterministic and probabilistic failure envelopes for strip foundations under combined vertical, horizontal and moment (V-H-M) loading.

Cavity Expansion in Cohesive-Frictional Soils with Limited Dilation

The problem of cavity expansion from zero radius has no characteristic length and therefore possesses a similarity solution, in which the cavity pressure remains constant and the continuing deformation is geometrically self-similar. In this case, the incremental velocity approach first used by Hill (1950) to analyze cavity expansion in Tresca materials can be extended to derive a solution for limiting pressure of cavity expansion in other types of material. In this article, a rigorous semi-analytical solution is derived, following Hill's incremental velocity method, for the expansion of cavities from zero initial radius in cohesive-frictional soils with limited dilation. In particular, the radius of the elastic-plastic interface c is used in this article as the time scale and the solution for the limit pressure has been presented. Solutions are evaluated for a number of cases representative of a range of cohesive-frictional and dilatant soils. A comparison is also made between the solutions presented here and previous solutions for cohesive-frictional soils that have unlimited (on-going) plastic dilation. In particular, the influence of limited plastic dilation on the cavity limit pressure is identified and discussed.

A preliminary exploration of the micro-scale behaviour of capillary barrier effect using microfluidics

Capillary barrier effect (CBE) is employed in a large number of geotechnical applications to decrease deep percolation or increase slope stability. However, the micro-scale behaviour of CBE is rarely investigated, and thus hampers the scientific design of capillary barrier systems. This study uses microfluidics to explore the micro-scale behaviour of CBE. Capillarity-driven water flow processes from fine to coarse porous media with different pore topologies and sizes were performed and analysed. The experimental results demonstrate that the basic physics of CBE is the preferential water movement into the fine porous media due to the larger capillarity. The effects of CBE on water flow processes can be identified as delaying the occurrence of breakthrough into the coarse porous media and increasing the water storage of the fine porous media. The CBE can impede the increase of the normalized length and decrease the normalized width of the water front, suggesting that the two normalized parameters are potential indicators to assess the performance of CBE at micro scale. CBE can be formed in square and honeycomb networks with the ratio of coarse to fine pore throat width larger than 2.0 when gravity is neglected, and its performance can be affected by pore topology and size.