Geotechnical Engineering Commons^™

Discussion: Effect Of Bentonite Slurry Pressure On Interface Friction Of Pipe Jacking, Ciaran Reilly, Trevor Orr

Articles

Pipe jacking is a technique used to construct tunnels by pushing prefabricated pipes through the ground from an entrance shaft to an exit shaft. This technique is referred as microtunneling in U.S. terminology, therefore, in the rest of the text, pipejacking and microtunneling will be used as having the same meaning. Pipe jacking is a more economical alternative to segmental lined tunnels. However, the main limitation of pipe jacking is the jacking distance, which is directly dependent on the friction between the pipe and the soil. Therefore, reducing the friction between the pipe and soil is a critical issue ...

Synthesis Of Fault Traces In Se Louisiana Relative To Infrastructure, David Culpepper, Elizabeth Chinn Mcdade, Nancye Dawers, Mark Kulp, Rui Zhang

Publications

Geological faulting has been implicated as a contributor to subsidence, coastal land-loss and submergence of marshlands in southern Louisiana. This report reviews whether fault motion, either by slow creep or more sudden slip, can cause deformation of engineered structures resulting in increased infrastructure maintenance and repair costs. The impact of surface, or near-surface, geologic faulting on critical infrastructure is insufficiently documented in southeastern Louisiana, but the state has a vast amount of energy-sector subsurface data that to date has been under-utilized for transportation and other near-surface engineering applications. Recent and on-going work by research groups at Tulane University, University of ...

Synthesis Of Fault Traces In Se Louisiana Relative To Infrastructure, David Culpepper, Elizabeth Chinn Mcdade, Nancye Dawers, Mark Kulp, Rui Zhang

Data

Corresponding data set for Tran-SET Project No. 17GTLSU12. Abstract of the final report is stated below for reference:

"Geological faulting has been implicated as a contributor to subsidence, coastal land-loss and submergence of marshlands in southern Louisiana. This report reviews whether fault motion, either by slow creep or more sudden slip, can cause deformation of engineered structures resulting in increased infrastructure maintenance and repair costs. The impact of surface, or near-surface, geologic faulting on critical infrastructure is insufficiently documented in southeastern Louisiana, but the state has a vast amount of energy-sector subsurface data that to date has been under-utilized for ...

Laboratory Evaluation Of Recycled Crushed Glass Cullet For Use As An Aggregate In Beach Nourishment And Marsh Creation Projects In Southeastern Louisiana, John C. Wildman

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

To combat the rapid degradation of the Louisiana coast, the Louisiana Coastal Protection and Restoration Authority has planned strategic land building initiatives throughout the Louisiana Gulf coast, including beach nourishment and marsh creation projects. It is commonly agreed that the state lacks sufficient renewable sediment resources to maintain the planned CPRA land building program. However, Louisiana, the state that commonly ranks last in state recycling percentage, recycles an estimated 0.6% of the waste glass consumed in the state. Glass is predominantly silica sand. This thesis evaluates laboratory‑determined characteristics of recycled crushed glass cullet to assess its suitability as ...

Amplification Of Earthquake Ground Motions In Washington, Dc, And Implications For Hazard Assessments In Central And Eastern North America, Thomas L. Pratt, J. Wright Horton Jr., Jessica Munoz, Susan E. Hough, Martin C. Chapman, C. Guney Olgun

C. Guney Olgun

The extent of damage in Washington, DC, from the 2011 M_W 5.8 Mineral, VA, earthquake was surprising for an epicenter 130 km away; U.S. Geological Survey “Did-You-Feel-It” reports suggest that Atlantic Coastal Plain and other unconsolidated sediments amplified ground motions in the city. We measure this amplification relative to bedrock sites using earthquake signals recorded on a temporary seismometer array. The spectral ratios show strong amplification in the 0.7 to 4 Hz frequency range for sites on sediments. This range overlaps with resonant frequencies of buildings in the city as inferred from their heights, suggesting amplification ...

Evaluation Of A Centrifuge Consolidation Technique To Determine The Effects Of Temperature And Time On Kaolinite Properties, Esteban Miranda Pinzon

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Abstract

The effects of time and temperature on the moisture content and unit weight profiles, as developed during a centrifuge consolidation process, were observed during the research program that is described herein. Specifically, a Beckman-Coulter Model J6-MI centrifuge with a six-place JS-4.2A swinging bucket rotor was utilized to consolidate kaolinite slurry samples. The consolidation procedure utilized specially designed slurry consolidometers, made from acrylic tubes with inside diameters of 2.63 inches (6.67 cm) and heights of 5.13 inches (13.04 cm). The tested kaolinite slurry samples were created by mixing 400 grams of dry kaolinite clay powder ...

Young’S Modulus As A Measurement To Estimate Damage Related With Alkali-Silica Reaction In Concrete., Anazaria J. Ortega Gonzalez

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The main purpose of this research is to compare two nondestructive methods to assess Alkali-Silica reaction (ASR) in concrete. Fifteen concrete prisms were cast using aggregates with different Alkali-Silica reactivity such as Jobe sand and Van Buren sand. The change in strain, shear wave velocity and Young’s modulus were determined according to ASTM C129 and ASTM C215, respectively. This data was collected by Dillon K Self, who determined that the shear wave velocity and strain are inversely proportional. However, when single cracking in the concrete specimen transition to map cracking, the shear wave velocity dropped significantly, whereas the strain ...

Utilizing 3d Printed Analogue Soils To Investigate Specimen Size Effects In Triaxial Testing, Claire Louise Stewart

Theses and Dissertations

Triaxial testing is one of the fundamental laboratory tests used in geotechnical engineering to determine strength parameters, such as shear strength and friction angle. Investigating the minimum representative elementary volume (REV) can verify the independence of size effects on strength parameters and ensure that the scaled laboratory tests results are consistent, repeatable, and representative of field conditions. Although, REV has been studied for many applications, there is disagreement within geotechnical engineering of a minimum particle diameter to specimen diameter to minimize the size effects related to the REV in consolidated drained (CD) triaxial tests. This research study compared the strength ...

Utilizing The Hvsr Second Peak For Surface Wave Inversions In The Mississippi Embayment, Ashraf Kamal Himel

Theses and Dissertations

Ambient noise data from 24 sites within the Mississippi Embayment were analyzed to estimate the fundamental frequency using the horizontal to vertical spectral ratio (HVSR) method. The fundamental frequency ranged from 0.17 to 3.43 Hz for the tested sites. At seventeen of the sites, a second higher frequency HVSR peak, which ranged from 0.617 Hz to 2.154 Hz, was observed in addition to the fundamental HVSR peak. The second peak frequency in the HVSR curve has been attributed by previous researchers as either an odd harmonic of the fundamental peak or a shallow impedance contrast from ...

Examining The Use Of Idealized Granular Material In Validated Dem Simulations, Anjana Thoroppady Kittu

Theses and Dissertations

Discrete element method (DEM) modeling, is becoming widely used for understanding the micro-mechanical behavior of granular materials at the particle level. This dissertation presents important considerations regarding the experimental boundary conditions and idealized granular materials used in DEM validations.

A common issue in DEM validation studies for direct shear and direct simple shear is selecting top and bottom cap boundary conditions that allow for shear transmission while also being efficiently modeled in the DEM simulations. While the traditional grid boundary types used in the laboratory can be replicated in the numerical models, researchers have also used fixed-particle boundaries, sawtooth boundaries ...

Robust Earthquake Site Classification Assessment At Ontario Bridge Sites., Alex Bilson Darko

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Canadian seismic design guidelines classify subsurface ground conditions based on the average shear-wave velocity (V_S) of the upper 30 meters (V_S30). We seek to optimize a robust earthquake site classification procedure for Ontario bridge sites, assessed primarily from blind comparison of non-invasive V_S depth profiling techniques. Non-invasive seismic testing is performed at 10 bridge sites in southern Ontario co-located with invasive penetration and/or borehole V_S measurements. Non-invasive surface wave dispersion and site amplification functions are jointly inverted to retrieve V_S profiles at each site. A general correlation between corrected V_S and cone tip ...

Evaluation Of Synthetic Cpt And Soil Boring Data By Various Spatial Interpolation Techniques, Md Habibur Rahman

LSU Master's Theses

In order to incorporate the influence of collected in-situ data, the spatial correlation between the data and the foundation needs to be explored. However, risk and uncertainty are the characteristics of the soil that cannot be eliminated. Statistical information of the soil property can be estimated from available field data obtained from testing at discrete locations across the site. In this research, several well-established spatial interpolation methods like ordinary kriging (OK), simple kriging (SK), inverse distance weight (IDW), spline, natural neighbor (NaN) and universal kriging (UK) were incorporated to evaluate the best method. Six CPT (Cone penetration test) (Tip Resistance ...

Development Of Environmentally-Friendly Stabilization Methods For Transportation Infrastructure Based On Geopolymers, Miladin Radovic, Anand Puppala

Publications

Geopolymers (GPs) have received much attention as an eco-friendly and sustainable alternative to conventional chemical additives, since they can be processed at room temperatures from aqueous solutions by utilizing waste materials (e.g. fly ash) or abundant natural sources (e.g. clay). A collaborative research study is carried out by teams from Texas A&M University (TAMU) and University of Texas at Arlington (UTA) to investigate the effectiveness of GPs for stabilizing base and subgrade materials by considering the strength and shrink-swell characteristics. Two types of clay, obtained from the North Dallas area, were mixed with a potassium-based GP synthesized ...

Prediction And Rehabilitation Of Highway Embankment Slope Failures In Changing Climate, Navid Jafari, Anand Puppala

Publications

Highway slopes constructed with clayey soil are prone to desiccation cracks due to wetting and drying weather cycle, which allows greater moisture infiltration into the embankment from precipitation. Fissures formed due to extended wetting and drying cycles allow water to seep deeper into the soil than surficial wetting and increase the water content. This increases the moisture content in the soil and results in reduction in shear strength to the fully softened strength. On the other hand, development of desiccation cracks and reduction of the soil matric suction ultimately result in higher hydraulic conductivity value which causes development of higher ...

Field Instrumentations And Numerical Analysis Of Geosynthetic Reinforced Soil – Integrated Bridge System (Grs-Ibs), Allam Ardah

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Geosynthetic reinforced soil (GRS) is a special soil with geosynthetic fabric closely stacked in layers as soil stabilization and considered an alternative design method to the conventional bridge support technology. In this research study, a field case study of Maree Michel bridge, which is located in Route LA 91 Vermilion Parish in Louisiana, was instrumented with six different types of instrumentations to monitor the performance of GRS-IBS bridge abutment and to develop 2D and 3D finite element models. The instrumentations include Shape Acceleration Array (SAA), earth pressure cells, strain gauges, piezometers, and thermocouples. Additionally, surveying was conducted at the bridge ...

Physical Modeling Of Flow Nets In Groundwater And Determination Of Hydraulic Conductivity, Hannah Nicholas, Moses Karakouzian

AANAPISI Poster Presentations

The goal of this study is to physically model the paths that water particles take through soil, and estimate hydraulic conductivity for several soil configurations. Water paths, or flow lines, are shown by injecting dye into sand contained in a rectangular acrylic glass tank with a vertical barrier in the center; water is poured on one side of the tank and a pump is used to maintain constant head loss. If flow lines are formed, a flow net is to be drawn using photos of the tank and hydraulic conductivity is to be calculated.

This project consists of four phases ...

Coir Fiber Reinforced Concrete, Jose De La Serna, Moses Karakouzian

AANAPISI Poster Presentations

This poster exhibits the testing and research done on general Portland Cement Concrete with the addition of coir (coconut) fibers as reinforcement. Using the fundamental constituents of cement (water, cement, fine and coarse aggregate) and processed coir fiber, concrete specimens were batched to test for compressive and flexural strengths (per appropriate ASTM standards). Cylindrical and rectangular beam specimens were subjected to loadings until failure occurred. The capacity and modes of failures of the specimens were observed. It was determined that:

• The addition of processed coir fibers decreases the overall strength of general Portland Cement Concrete. • The tested concrete’s mode ...

Response Spectrum Estimation Using Support Vector Machines, Jale Tezcan, Qiang Cheng, Lincoln Hill

Qiang CHENG

This study investigates the applicability and efficiency of support vector machines for the problem of estimating the earthquake response spectra from the Fourier amplitude spectra of the ground motion acceleration. Two methods are commonly used for this purpose: time domain simulations, and the random vibration theory. The use of time domain simulations offers high accuracy at high computational cost, while the use random vibration theory, although not computationally intensive, requires knowledge of the statistical distribution of the response amplitudes. This study treats the task of estimating response spectra from the Fourier spectra as a nonlinear regression problem, and constructs a ...

Evaluation Of Undrained Shear Strength And Soil Classification From Cone Penetration Test, Md Imran Hossain

LSU Master's Theses

The in-situ cone and piezocone penetration tests (CPT, PCPT) has been widely used by the geotechnical engineering community for subsurface soil characterization and classification, and for the evaluation of many engineering soil properties, such as undrained shear strength (s_u), unit weight (γ), constrained modulus (M), coefficient of consolidation (c_v), and stress history (OCR). The objective of this research study was to estimate the undrained shear strength of clayey soil using CPT/PCPT data in addition to some soil boring log data. At the same time, soil classification charts/methods based on CPT/PCPT were investigated and modified. For ...

Evaluation Of Site Variability And Its Application In Design, Abu Hakim Muhammad Hasan Faisal

LSU Master's Theses

Geotechnical characterization has an important role in engineering geology as well as in implementation of any project. There are several variables and uncertainties involved in characterizing a project site. Four different sources of uncertainties represent the characterization of geotechnical variability, which include spatial variability, measurement error, statistical error and model bias. Spatial variability is expressed in terms of the mean, variance, and scale of fluctuation. Several statistical techniques such as the Gauge R & R, which includes X-Bar/R and ANOVA, and the Second Moment can be applied to compute site variability in terms of the coefficient of variations. Measurement error ...