Effective stress law for rock masses and its application in impoundment analysis based on deformation reinforcement theory

Reservoir impoundment is related to several hydraulic engineering concerns,including irreversible valley contractions,landslides and reservoir-induced earthquakes.However,these phenomena,such as valley contractions,are hardly to be explained by the conventional method.The scientific understanding of water effects during impoundment and their hazards to hydraulic structure are needed.The effective stress law for fissured rock masses is introduced in the elasto-plastic model employing the Drucker-Prager criterion and implemented in the three dimension(3D)nonlinear finite element method(FEM)program Three-dimensional FINite Element(TFINE).The slope deforms towards river-way during impoundment since the increasing pore pressure in fissures changes stress state and leads to additional plastic deformation in the rock materials.The value of Biot coefficient and the influence of water on rock materials are discussed in detail.Thus,the mechanism of slope deformation during the impoundment of Jinping-I arch dam is revealed,and the deformation is accurately measured.The application of the effective stress law provides a method to consider stress assessment,deformation evaluation and stability estimate of hydraulic structures during the impoundment process.This is a beneficial exploration and an improvement of hydraulic engineering design.

Design of an Index System for Deep Groundwater Management Efficiency Evaluation: A Case Study in Tianjin City, China

An effective evaluation system can provide specific and practical suggestions to the deep groundwater management. But such kind of evaluation system has not been proposed in China. In this study, an evaluation index system is specifically developed to evaluate deep groundwater management efficiency. It is composed of three first-level indicators(law enforcement capability, management ability, and management effectiveness) and eleven second-level indicators. The second-level indicators include seven mandatory indicators and four optional indicators. Piecewise linear function is used to normalize the quantitative indicators, and expert scoring method and questionnaire survey method are used to normalize the qualitative indicators. Then a comprehensive indicator weighting evaluation method is used to evaluate the first-level indicators and the target topic. A case study is carried out to evaluate deep groundwater management efficiency in Tianjin City. According to the evaluation score in each period, the management efficiency of every district in Tianjin City gradually improved. The overall evaluation score in the early deep groundwater extraction period is 0.12. After a series of deep groundwater protection efforts, this score reached to 0.61 in 2007, and met the regulation criteria. The evaluation results also showed that the further groundwater management efforts in Tianjin City should be focused on building a dynamic database to collect comprehensive deep well-log data; and on a reasonable design and distribution of the groundwater monitoring network. It demonstrated that the index system is suitable to locate the deficiencies of current groundwater management systems and to guide further improvements. It can then be used to protect deep groundwater.

Experimental investigation on the anisotropy of friction property for dry and water-saturated rock

Friction properties of rock are closely connected with the anisotropy.The anisotropy of rock friction can provide a valuable assessment for geotechnical and geological engineering.In this study,the rotary friction tests were conducted to analyze the water effect on the friction property and the friction anisotropy of the four types of rock.The drilling response model(DD-model)was employed to characterize the rotary friction behavior of the rocks.The parameters of this model include the three types of friction parameters:1/ς,μ,and f,where 1/ςandμare constant,and f is a variable.A quantitative method is proposed for assessing the anisotropy of rock friction.The results of the rotary friction tests indicate that the relation between torque force and thrust force conforms to the DD-model.The changes of two friction constants 1/ςandμfrom dry state to water-saturated state suggest that the water effect on the friction strength of the rocks exhibits significant anisotropy.The friction strength determined by the friction variable f increases first,then decreases,and finally stabilizes with the increasing of depth.AIf is an anisotropy index calculated by the proposed method.The percentage difference of the average value of AIf between water-saturated and dry states shows the degree of the water effect on the friction anisotropy of the rocks,mudstone(MU)>granite(GR)>fine sandstone(FS)>argillaceous siltstone(AS).The quantitative model is hopefully constructed for characterizing the relation between the anisotropic friction strength of rock and the moisture state in future.

Size Effect for Normal Strength Concrete in Uniaxial Tension

This paper presents a new size effect model for normal strength concrete subjected to uniaxial tension. The model is based on two extremes, sand cement paste in uniaxial tension and a sand-cement-paste/rock interface in uniaxial tension. Uniaxial tension tests with normal strength concrete measuring the tensile strength of normal strength concrete specimens with different geometrical shapes and different ratios of the aggregate size to the characteristic dimension of the concrete specimen show a significant size effect. The theoretical size effect law prediction agrees well with the experimental data.