Bearing Capacity Analysis of Shallow Foundations Supported on an Artificial Fill(Substation at Kashari,Tirana)

The paper presents conclusions related to the design of shallow foundations,at the site where the Substation at Kashari,in Tirana is foreseen to be constructed.The project includes buildings with small to medium structures with 1-3 stories.The geological survey works include 6 boreholes of a depth 20.0 m,90 SPT(Standard Penetration Tests)tests,and laboratory works include 13 direct shear tests,27 unconfined and compressive strength tests,7 CU(consolidated undrained)tests and 9 UU(unconsolidated undrained)tests,etc.The foundation design must fulfill both,bearing and settlement criteria,but in this case the settlements of foundations are not possible to be calculated,since the laboratory works do not include any consolidation test.So,the local bearing capacity is expected to control the design in terms of bearing capacity and settlements.The local bearing capacity of shallow square foundations is evaluated by using Terzaghi’s formula,based on reduced shear strength parameters of soils below the bottom of foundations.The results are compared with the bearing capacity values calculated by using Burland and Burbdige(1984)method,based on the data of SPT tests.This method is used for checking the settlement(serviceability)criterion in the foundation design,when the direct settlement calculation is missing.The paper presents some conclusions related to local bearing capacity foundation-based design.

GA-BASED PID NEURAL NETWORK CONTROL FOR MAGNETIC BEARING SYSTEMS

In order to overcome the system non-linearity and uncertainty inherent in magnetic bearing systems, a GA（genetic algnrithm）-based PID neural network controller is designed and trained tO emulate the operation of a complete system （magnetic bearing, controller, and power amplifiers）. The feasibility of using a neural network to control nonlinear magnetic bearing systems with unknown dynamics is demonstrated. The key concept of the control scheme is to use GA to evaluate the candidate solutions （chromosomes）, increase the generalization ability of PID neural network and avoid suffering from the local minima problem in network learning due to the use of gradient descent learning method. The simulation results show that the proposed architecture provides well robust performance and better reinforcement learning capability in controlling magnetic bearing systems.

FAULT DIAGNOSIS APPROACH FOR ROLLER BEARINGS BASED ON EMPIRICAL MODE DECOMPOSITION METHOD AND HILBERT TRANSFORM

Based upon empirical mode decomposition (EMD) method and Hilbert spectrum, a method for fault diagnosis of roller bearing is proposed. The orthogonal wavelet bases are used to translate vibration signals of a roller bearing into time-scale representation, then, an envelope signal can be obtained by envelope spectrum analysis of wavelet coefficients of high scales. By applying EMD method and Hilbert transform to the envelope signal, we can get the local Hilbert marginal spectrum from which the faults in a roller bearing can be diagnosed and fault patterns can be identified. Practical vibration signals measured from roller bearings with out-race faults or inner-race faults are analyzed by the proposed method. The results show that the proposed method is superior to the traditional envelope spectrum method in extracting the fault characteristics of roller bearings.

Flow-pipe-soil coupling mechanisms and predictions for submarine pipeline instability

The stability of a submarine pipeline on the seabed concerns the flow-pipe-soil coupling, with influential factors related to the ocean waves and/or currents, the pipeline and the surrounding soils. A flow-pipe-soil coupling system generally has various instability modes, including the vertical and lateral on-bottom instabilities, the tunnel-erosion of the underlying soil and the subsequent vortex-induced vibrations（VIVs） of free-spanning pipelines. This paper reviews the recent advances of the slip-line field solutions to the bearing capacity, the flow-pipe-soil coupling mechanism and the prediction for the lateral instability, the multi-physical coupling analysis of the tunnel-erosion, and the coupling mechanics between the VIVs and the local scour. It is revealed that the mechanism competition always exists among various instability modes, e.g., the competition between the lateral-instability and the tunnel-erosion. Finally, the prospects and scientific challenges for predicting the instability of a long-distance submarine pipeline are discussed in the context of the deep-water oil and gas exploitations.