Effect of soaking time of dithionite-citrate-bicarbonate solution on strength and deformation characteristics of lateritic soil

This study aimed to reveal the influence of different free-iron-oxides contents on the strength and deformation characteristics of in situ lateritic soil.A test method that combined the selective chemical dissolution method and in situ Ménard pressuremeter test(PMT)was proposed.The soaking time in dithioniteecitrateebicarbonate(DCB)solution was used as a variable to control the free-iron-oxides content in lateritic soil.Then,the in situ lateritic soil boreholes with different soaking time were tested by PMT.The results showed that the in situ horizontal pressure p0,critical edge pressure pf,ultimate pressure prediction pl,pressuremeter modulus Em,shear modulus Gm,and foundation-bearing capacity f0k of lateritic soil decreased rapidly after immersing in DCB solution within 1e4 d.With increasing soaking time,the decrease rate reduced gradually.Moreover,the relationship curve between free-iron-oxides content and soaking time declined rapidly and then stabilized,and the free-iron-oxides content at the inflection point was 30.11 g/kg.When the free-iron-oxides content changed to the inflection point,the free-iron-oxides that played a cementing role was largely removed,indicating that the effective cementing iron-content of Miaoling lateritic soil was about 52.9%.This study demonstrated that the proposed test method can determine the influence of free-iron-oxides content on the strength and deformation characteristics of lateritic soil.

Dynamic and Field Analysis of Pile Driving in Cameroun

Complexity and implementation of design norms in Cameroon required a proven foreign expertise, but nowadays local engineers are mastering modern construction techniques. They are turning to pile foundations to solve the problem of construction sites on weak soils. The objective of this work is to present the trend of the country pile-driving capacity of some foundations design and construction companies. The proposed analytical method is based on Finite Element Method and on the theory of wave＇s propagation and transmission along the pile taking into account experimental data on the construction site. The proposed method is validated through recorded data during the construction of the Mungo Bridge in Cameroon, and obtained analytical results are in agreement with experimental results.

Pressure-controlled elliptical cavity expansion under anisotropic initial stress: Elastic solution and its application

This paper presents an elastic solution to the pressure-controlled elliptical cavity expansion problem under the anisotropic stress conditions. The problem is formulated by the assumption that an initial elliptical cavity is expanded under a uniform pressure and subjected to an in-plane initial horizontal pressure Kσ_0 and vertical pressure σ_0 at infinity. A conformal mapping technique is used to map the outer region of the initial elliptical cavity in the physical plane onto the inner region of a unit circle in the phase plane. Using the complex variable theory, the stress functions are derived; hence, the stress and displacement distributions around the elliptical cavity wall can be obtained. Furthermore, a closed-form solution to the pressure-expansion relationship is presented based on the elastic solution to the stress and displacement. Next, the proposed analytical solutions are validated by comparing with the Kirsch's solution and the finite element method(FEM). The solution to the presented pressure-controlled elliptical cavity expansion can be applied to two cases in practice. One is to employ the solution to the interpretation of the shear modulus of the soil or rocks and the in-situ stress in the pre-bored pressuremeter test under the lateral anisotropic initial stress condition. The other is the interpretation of the membrane expansion of a flat dilatometer test using the pressure-controlled elliptical cavity expansion solution. The two cases in practice confirm the usefulness of the present analytical solution.

Calibration of soil parameters based on intelligent algorithm using efficient sampling method

This study combined a neural network and Latin hypercube sampling(LHS)to calibrate soil parameters.The Monte Carlo parameters were calibrated by generating different numbers of training samples for pressuremeter tests and excavations.The results showed that when the number of samples was 25 or 50,the parameter calibration accuracy was very high.However,the improvement in accuracy did not increase significantly with a further increase in the number of samples,but tended to be stable.The number of training samples was set at 50 to strike a balance between the calibration accuracy and efficiency for four parameters.For 25 groups of samples,the calibration results using LHS were better than those using orthogonal sampling.Compared to stochastic optimization algorithms,a neural network combined with LHS could significantly reduce the calibration time.This method was applied to actual foundation pit engineering in China.The results showed that using the proposed calibration method clearly improved the accuracy when predicting the deformation induced by the excavation.