Stabilisation of estuarine sediments with an alkali-activated cement for deep soil mixing applications

In this work,an alternative alkali-activated cement(AAC)made of ladle slag precursor mixed with sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate has been developed to enhance the bearing capacity of estuarine soils in coastal conditions via deep soil mixing(DSM).The AAC was optimized to use a low reactivity precursor(ladle slag)and to deal with a contaminated high-water content natural sediment cured under water.The material performance was analysed by comparison to a mixture made with Portland cement and cured in the same conditions.Flexural and unconfined compressive strength tests as well as seismic waves measurements after 3-,7-,14-and 28-d curing were performed to obtain a relationship between elastic stiffness and strength with curing time for both mixtures.Remarkably,the AAC mix demonstrated superior strength results,exhibiting almost double flexural and compressive strengths after 28 d compared to the Portland cement mix.The AAC mix also showed a higher rate of stiffness increase than the Portland cement mix,which has a higher initial stiffness at young ages but lower stiffness evolution.Leachate analysis confirmed that the proposed AAC could effectively immobilise any contaminants from soil or precursors.The effect of curing under stress was analysed in triaxial compression tests and found to be insignificant,indicating that laboratory data obtained without stress curing can represent the material's behaviour in a DSM column,which will cure under the weight of the column.

Some considerations on the physical mea-sure of seismic intensity

The study on seismic intensity can be traced prior to the time that modern seismology was established. In its early stage the seismic intensity was designed to serve as a measure in scaling the severity of earthquake damage to civil engineering and environmental structures. Also the seismic intensity is usually assigned by engineers and seismologists with one or two characteristic parameters of earthquake ground motions to reflect earthquake damage potential so as to be able to serve as an input earthquake load for seismic design of structures. So choosing a proper parameter to reflect the action of seismic intensity is the main objective of the research on physical measure of seismic intensity. However, since various kinds of structures have quite different damage mechanisms, there will exist great differences in damages to different structures located at the same area during the same earthquake. Particularly, in some cases, quite different damages have happened even to the structures of same kind due to many other factors such as different construction materials, different configurations or on the different types of sites where structures located. In addition, the ground motion parameters, which result in damage to structures, are not the single peak value of ground motion. Hence, this paper emphasizes that the research on new physical measure of seismic intensity should not only consider the structural characteristics but also take into account other parameters such as duration, energy of ground motion and so on. In particular, as the physical measures of intensity, different ground motion parameter should be adopted for different structures.

Observations on the application of artificial neural network to predicting ground motion measures

Application of the artificial neural network （ANN） to predict pseudospectral acceleration or peak ground acceleration is explored in the study. The training of ANN model is carried out using feed-forward backpropagation method and about 600 records from 39 California earthquakes. The statistics of the residuals or modeling error for the trained ANN-based models are almost the same as those for the parametric ground motion prediction equations, derived through regression analysis; the residual or modeling error can be modeled as a normal variate. The similarity and differences between the predictions by these two approaches are shown. The trained ANN-based models, however, are not robust because the models with almost identical mean square errors do not always lead to the same predictions. This undesirable behaviour for predicting the ground motion measures has not been shown or discussed in the literature; the presented results, at least, serve to raise questions and caution on this problem. A practical approach to ameliorate this problem, perhaps, is to consider several trained ANN models, and to take the average of the predicted values from the trained ANN models as the predicted ground motion measure.

Preliminary investigation of building damage in Hatay under February 6,2023 Turkey earthquakes

On February 6,2023,an M_(w)7.8 earthquake hit the south of Kahramanmaras prefecture,Turkey,followed by another M_(w)7.5 earthquake after nine hours in the middle region of the Kahramanmaras prefecture.More than 84,000 buildings collapsed or were severely damaged,and more than 50,000 lives were lost in Turkey and Syria.Some of the authors,as members of Chinese rescue team,entered Antakya,Hatay prefecture,and investigated the damaged buildings.This paper first summarizes the damage patterns of buildings and provides three reasons for the massive number of collapsed buildings;i.e.,the lack of seismic measures for better ductility,site effects such as liquefaction and surface rupture,and pronounced low-frequency components of the ground motions.Next,the seismic responses of two typical buildings are calculated based on the geometric data estimated by visual inspection.The results imply that the resonance of the whole structure and the poorer ductility of key members resulted in the collapse of buildings.Finally,some conclusions are drawn.Note that although a large number of buildings were seriously damaged to collapse,the majority of buildings in the areas of extreme shaking were lightly or moderately damaged,which implies that well designed and constructed buildings were able to survive and protect human lives even in over-design earthquakes.

Variations of the Earth＇s rotation rate and cyclic processes in geodynamics

The authors analyzed the relationship between variations of the Earth＇s rotation rate and the geodynamic processes within the Earth＇s body, including seismic activity, The rotation rate of a planet determines its uniaxial compression along the axis of rotation and the areas of various surface elements of the body. The Earth＇s ellipticity variations, caused naturally by the rotation rate variations, are manifested in vertical components of precise GPS measurements. Comparative analysis of these variations is considered in view of modern theoretical ideas concerning the Earth＇s figure. The results justify further research that is of interest for improvement of space svstems and technologiesi.