The objective of the present study was to develop a fluid flow-coupled distinct element model capable of capturing the undrained behaviour of granular soils by considering fundamental physical mechanisms that involve fluid flow and particle interaction. The method considers granular media as assemblies of ellipsoidal particles arranged on a plane and interacting by means of contact forces. Saturation effects are incorporated by assuming that particles are immersed in fluid, the flow of which is simulated as occurring through a network of conduits. The flow through conduits is according to a Hagen-Poiseuille relation; a transient solution is obtained by solving a system of differential equations. The developed fluid-flow coupled distinct element was used to conduct various numerical simulations and the mechanisms of undrained deformations were examined from a micromechanical point of view. The dissertation begins with a literature review on the undrained behaviour of granular materials as observed in laboratory experiments. A review of previous attempts to simulate undrained tests micromechanically is also presented, and the advantages and disadvantages of various methods are examined. The capability of the developed model to simulate two-dimensional fluid-flow and pressure dissipation problems is demonstrated by means of comparisons with analytical solutions. Fluid pressure dissipation problems are qualitatively compared with Terzaghi's one-dimension theory of consolidation. It is shown that transient flow problems are accurately modelled by the fluid flow network approach. Simulated compression tests were carried out to examine the effects of different confining pressures and initial densities on the macroscopic response. The results compare favorably with those commonly observed in undrained laboratory experiments. Simulated tests are analyzed from a micromechanical point of view. It is shown that macroscopic behaviour can be traced to changes in micromechanical fabric descriptors. The effects of the interparticle friction angle on the undrained behaviour of the assemblies are investigated. The undrained strength is considerably increased by increasing interparticle friction. The main mechanism found to be responsible for the development of higher strength is the tendency of the specimens to dilate during shear distortion. The effects of the principal stress direction on the macroscopic response are examined. The behaviour of initially anisotropic samples is significantly altered by the direction of the principal stresses relative to the anisotropy direction. It is demonstrated that macroscopic permeability of the media has a considerable effect on the strength. This behaviour is attributed to the inhomogeneity of pore pressure distributions which increases with decreased permeability. The results presented are generally in agreement with observations previously reported from laboratory experiments. The possible applications of the model for future research are also discussed.

Within the confines of this study, seismic soil liquefaction triggering potential of a dam foundation is assessed within an integrated probabilistic seismic hazard assessment framework. More specifically, the scheme presented hereby directly integrates effective stress-based seismic soil liquefaction triggering assessment with seismic hazard analysis framework, supported by an illustrative case. The proposed methodology successively, i) processes the discrete stages of probabilistic seismic hazard workflow upon seismic source characterization, ii) numerically develops the target elastic acceleration response spectra for typical rock sites, covering all the earthquake scenarios that are re-grouped with respect to earthquake magnitude and distance, iii) matches the strong ground motion records selected from a database with the target response spectra for every defined scenario, and iv) performs 2-D equivalent linear seismic response analyses of a 56 m high earth fill dam founded on 24 m thick alluvial deposits. Results of seismic response analyses are presented in the form of annual probability of excess pore pressure ratios and seismically-induced lateral deformations exceeding various threshold values. For the purpose of assessing the safety of the dam slopes, phi-c reduction based slope stability analyses were also performed representing post-liquefaction conditions. After having integrated this phi-c reduction analyses results into the probabilistic hazard framework, annual probabilities of factor of safety of slopes exceeding various threshold values were estimated. As the concluding remark, probability of liquefaction triggering, induced deformations and factor of safeties are presented for a service life of 100 years. It is believed that the proposed probabilistic seismic performance assessment methodology which incorporates both phi-c reduction based failure probabilities and seismic soil liquefaction-induced deformation potentials, provides dam engineers a robust methodology to rationally quantify the level of confidence with their decisions regarding if costly mitigation of dam foundation soils against seismic soil liquefaction triggering hazard and induced risks is necessary.

Recent ground failure case histories after 1994 Northridge, 1999 Kocaeli and 1999 Chi-Chi earthquakes revealed that low-plasticity silt-clay mixtures generate significant cyclic pore pressures and can exhibit a strain-softening response, which may cause significant damage to overlying structural systems. These observations accelerated research studies on liquefaction susceptibility of fine-grained soils. Alternative approaches to Chinese Criteria were proposed by several researchers (Seed et al. 2003, Bray and Sancio 2006, Boulanger and Idriss 2006) most of which assess liquefaction triggering potential based on cyclic test results compared on the basis of index properties of soils (such as LL, PI, LI, wc/LL). Although these new methodologies are judged to be major improvements over Chinese Criteria, still there exist unclear issues regarding if and how reliably these methods can be used for the assessment of liquefaction triggering potential of fine grained soils. In this study, results of cyclic tests performed on undisturbed specimens (ML, CL, MH and CH) were used to study cyclic shear strain and excess pore water pressure generation response of fine-grained soils. Based on comparisons with the cyclic response of saturated clean sands, a shift in pore pressure ratio (ru) vs. shear strain response is observed, which is identified to be a function of PI, LL and (wc/LL). Within the confines of this study, i) probabilistically based boundary curves identifying liquefaction triggering potential in the ru vs. shear strain domain were proposed as a function of PI, LL and (wc/LL), ii) these boundaries were then mapped on to the normalized net tip resistance (qt,1,net) vs. friction ratio (FR) domain, consistent with the work of Cetin and Ozan (2009). The proposed framework enabled both Atterberg limits and CPT based assessment of liquefaction triggering potential of fine grained low plasticity soils, differentiating clearly both cyclic mobility and liquefaction responses.

Weakening and liquefaction of sands with increasing excess pore water pressures under repeated loads is well-known. Occurrence of extensive damage to the built environment also at the sites underlain by fine soils during earthquakes have led the researchers to focus on the seismic response of such soils more recently. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the factors affecting cyclic behavior of saturated low-plastic fine soils through laboratory testing. An extensive laboratory testing program including conventional soil mechanics tests, consolidation tests, reconstituted sample preparation, monotonic and cyclic triaxial tests was carried out for this purpose. Laboratory program was conducted within two parts, one of which includes the tests performed with the silt specimens reconstituted in the laboratory and the other consisting of the tests performed with the undisturbed soil samples retrieved from Adapazari. The effects of the inherent soil properties and the effects of loading characteristics on the cyclic response of saturated low plastic silty soils were examined separately. Based on the test results, models were introduced (i) to predict the relationship between excess pore pressure ratio (ru), number of cycles (N) and cyclic stress ratio (CSRtx), (ii) to estimate the effect of initial shear stress on cyclic response, and (iii) to show the effects of initial void ratio (ei), initial shear stress ratio (

No description available.

Drainage methods for liquefaction remediation have been in use since the 1970's and have traditionally included stone columns, gravel drains, and more recently prefabricated vertical drains. The traditional drainage techniques such as stone columns and gravel drains rely upon a combination of drainage and densification to mitigate liquefaction and thus, the improvement observed as a result of these techniques cannot be ascribed solely to drainage. Therefore, uncertainty exists as to the effectiveness of pure drainage, and there is some hesitancy among engineers to use newer drainage methods such as prefabricated vertical drains, which rely primarily on drainage rather than the combination of drainage and densification. Additionally, the design methods for prefabricated vertical drains are based on the design methods developed for stone columns and gravel drains even though the primary mechanisms for remediation are not the same. The objectives of this research are to use physical and numerical models to assess the effectiveness of drainage as a liquefaction remediation technique and to identify the controlling behavioral mechanisms that most influence the performance of sites treated with prefabricated vertical drains. In the first part of this research, a suite of three large-scale dynamic centrifuge tests of untreated and drain-treated sloping soil profiles was performed. Acceleration, pore pressure, and deformation data was used to evaluate the effectiveness of drainage in reducing liquefaction-induced lateral deformations. The results showed that the drains reduced the generated peak excess pore pressures and expedited the dissipated of pore water pressures both during and after shaking. The influence of the drains on the excess pore pressure response was found to be sensitive to the characteristics of the input motion. The drainage resulted in a 30 to 60% reduction in the horizontal deformations and a 20 to 60% reduction in the vertical settlements. In the second part of this research, the data and insights gained from the centrifuge tests was used to develop numerical models that can be used to investigate the factors that most influence the performance of untreated and drain-treated lateral spread sites. Finite element modeling was performed using the OpenSees platform. Three types of numerical models were developed - 2D infinite slope unit cell models of the area of influence around a single drain, 3D infinite slope unit cell models of the area of influence around a single drain, and a full 2D plane strain model of the centrifuge tests that included both the untreated and drain-treated slopes as well as the centrifuge container. There was a fairly good match between the experimental and simulated excess pore pressures. The unit cell models predicted larger horizontal deformations than were observed in the centrifuge tests because of the infinite slope geometry. Issues were identified with the constitutive model used to represent the liquefiable sand. These issues included a coefficient of volumetric compressibility that was too low and a sensitivity to low level accelerations when the stress path is near the failure surface. In the final part of this research, the simulated and experimental data was used to examine the relationship between the generated excess pore water pressures and the resulting horizontal deformations. It was found that the deformations are directly influenced by both the excess pore pressures and the intensity of shaking. There is an excess pore pressure threshold above which deformations begin to become significant. The horizontal deformations correlate well to the integral of the average excess pore pressure ratio-time history above this threshold. They also correlate well to the Arias intensity and cumulative absolute velocity intensity measures. / text

Existing and novel laboratory techniques and equipment are used to produce comprehensive information on the liquefaction mitigation provided by granular drainage columnar inclusions in loose sand. Extensive use is made of bender-element testing techniques and the frequency dependence of such measurements is examined. Phase-sensitive detection is proposed as a new method to obtain the frequency response of the element data. The applicability of this technique is extended to provide a convenient and accurate method for determination of the time-of-flight of a shear-wave in sand. This technique is employed to measure the load share between sand and columnar components during triaxial testing. A novel low cost, high loading frequency, triaxial testing system is developed and preliminary testing is carried out on both pure sand samples and composite columnar samples. The testing programme examines aspects of liquefaction mitigation due to the rigidity of the columnar inclusions and due to the increased permeability of the columns. The laboratory results are verified by the application of existing analytical models. The equipment and techniques are used to investigate the feasibility of using recycled aggregates in place of stone backfill.

published_or_final_version / Urban Design / Master / Master of Urban Design

Pile foundations that support offshore structures are required to resist not only static loading, but also dynamic loading from waves, wind and earthquakes. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of the behavior of offshore piles under cyclic or dynamic loading using the finite element approach. To achieve this goal, an appropriate constitutive model is required to simulate the behavior of soils and interfaces. The DSC constitutive model is developed for saturated interfaces to study the behavior under severe shear deformation at the soil-pile interface. Monotonic and cyclic simple shear experiments are conducted on Ottawa sand-steel interfaces under drained and undrained conditions using the Cyclic-Multi-Degree-of-Freedom shear device with porewater pressure measurement (CYMDOF-P). The effect of various parameters such as normal stress, surface roughness of steel, type of loading, and the amplitude and frequency of the applied displacement in two-way cyclic loading are investigated. The data from the simple shear tests on saturated interfaces are used to calculate the parameters in the DSC model. The resulting parameters are then used to verify the DSC model by back predicting tests from which parameters are determined and independent tests that are not used in parameters determination. The model predictions, in general, were found to provide a highly satisfactory correlation with the observations. In the context of DSC, the concept of critical disturbance is developed to identify initiation of liquefaction in saturated Ottawa sand-steel interfaces. This method is based on using microstructural changes in material as an indication of liquefaction identification. The finite element method, along with DSC constitutive model, is used to investigate the response of offshore piles to dynamic loading. These include cyclic loading of axially loaded instrumented pile in clay and full-scale laterally loaded pile in sand. The DSC model is used to model the nonlinear behavior of saturated soils and interfaces. A nonlinear dynamic finite element program DSC-DYN2D based on the DSC modeling approach and the theory of nonlinear porous media is used for this purpose. Results from numerical solutions are compared with field measurements. Strong agreement between numerical predictions and field measurements are an indication of the ability to solve challenging soil-structure interaction problems.Based on the results of this research, it can be stated that the finite element-DSC model simulation allows realistic prediction of complex dynamic offshore pile-soil interaction problems, and is capable of characterizing behavior of saturated soils and interfaces involving liquefaction.

No description available.