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The shaft bearing capacity often plays a dominant role for the overall structural behaviour of axially loaded piles in offshore deep foundations. Under cyclic loading, a narrow zone of soil at the pile-soil interface is subject to cyclic shearing solicitations. Thereby, the soil may densify and lead to a decrease of confining stress around the pile due to microphenomena such as particle crushing, migration and rearrangement. This reduction of radial stress has a direct impact on the shaft capacity, potentially leading in extreme cases to pile failure. An adequate interface model is needed in order to model this behaviour numerically. Different authors have proposed models that take typical Interface phenomena in account such as densification, grain breakage, normal pressure effect and roughness. However, as the models become more complex, a great number of material parameters need to be defined and calibrated. This paper proposes the adoption and transformation of an existing soil bulk model (Pastor- Zienkiewicz) into an interface model. To calibrate the new interface model, the results of an experimental campaign with the ring shear device under cyclic loading conditions are here presented. The constitutive model shows a good capability to reproduce typical features of sand behaviour such as cyclic compaction and dilatancy, which in saturated partially-drained conditions may lead to liquefaction and cyclic mobility phenomena.
In this paper a shear test, which helps to study local behavior of the soil-pile interaction, is modelled numerically with the Finite Element Method as a 2D plane strain problem. A normal pressure on top and shear displacement on side were applied. So far, the material behavior was considered elastic for the sake of simplicity.
The effect of thickness on contact elements and the presence of in plane stress has been highlighted. The purpose of the paper is to find a suitable contact element which represents more close to reality a soil-pile interaction problem under cyclic axial loading. Moreover, an insight on the presence of in-plane stress shows that it needs to be considered cautiously.
Most railway embankments in the UK were built in the Victorian era and are of end-tipped construction using materials (usually cohesive) excavated from adjacent cuttings, resulting in a clod-and-matrix structure. Historically, there has been a lack in understanding of the mechanical behaviour of such railway embankments. In the next decade railway traffic in the UK, particularly freight, is forecast to grow considerably. Consequently, there is a need to improve the understanding of how increases in rail traffic loading may influence the mechanical behaviour of railway embankments and thus track performance. The Rail Safety and Standards Board in conjunction with Network Rail is currently undertaking a programme of applied research into this topic. As part of these studies a programme of physical model tests has been carried out. Physical model tests can provide high quality data on system performance under a large range of loading conditions and geometrical configurations. The data can be generated rapidly, with test periods of weeks or months rather than years or decades. Additionally, boundary conditions are well-defined and controlled, compared with the complex situations encountered in full scale embankments in the field. This paper summarises the physical model test programme, the development of the test set-up, the tests themselves and the conclusions drawn.
The authors are currently investigating the possibility to apply compaction grouting for offshore pile foundations (Jacket piles as well as monopiles) as a possible retrofitting technique for an optimised foundation concept. In this research project, we are developing a design approach aiming to predict the ideal amount and properties of a grout for a specific soil situation and desired improvement of pile bearing capacity after Installation and during service time. Both numerical and experimental tests have been carried out to investigate the injection process during which a highly viscous grout is injected into the soil under high pressure to displace and compact the surrounding soil without fracturing it. The implicit Material Point Method (MPM) based on a mixed formulation is the numerical technique chosen to deal with the expected large deformations and the arbitrary shape of the developing grout bulb. The usage of MPM prevents both the need of remeshing and the numerical instability induced by extensive mesh distortion. For validation with experimental results, we have constructed a testing chamber with one transparent sidewall. This chamber enables us to observe the injection process directly at the transparent vertical window and to measure the in-plane soil displacements and strains by means of the Digital Image Correlation (DIC) technique.
The results already reveal the interrelation of soil and grout properties for a successful usage of this common ground improvement technique.
Here we investigate the physical mechanisms behind the surface erosion of a cohesive granular soil induced by an impinging jet by means of numerical simulations coupling fluid and grains at the microscale. The 2D numerical model combines the Discrete Element and Lattice Boltzmann methods (DEM-LBM) and accounts for the granular cohesion with a contact model featuring a paraboloidal yield surface. Here we review first the hydrodynamical conditions imposed by the fluid jet on a solid granular packing, turning then the attention to the impact of cohesion on the erosion kinetics. Finally, the use of an additional subcritical debonding damage model based on the work of Silvani and co-workers provides a novel insight into the internal solicitation of the cohesive granular sample by the impinging jet.
We focus here on the major and still relevant issue of soil erosion by fluid flows, and more specifically on the determination of both a critical threshold for erosion occurrence and a kinetics that specifies the rate of eroded matter entrainment. A state-of-the-art is first proposed with a critical view on the most commonly used methods and erosion models. It is then discussed an alternative strategy, promoting the use of model materials that allow systematic parametric investigations with the purpose of identifying more precisely the local mechanisms responsible for soil particle erosion and ultimately quantifying both critical onsets and kinetics, possibly through existing or novel empirical erosion laws. Finally, we present and discuss several examples following this methodology, implemented either by means of experiments or numerical simulations, and coupling erosion tests in several particular hydrodynamical configurations with wisely selected mechanical tests.
Erosion of soils affects both natural landscapes and engineering constructions as embankment dams or levees. Improving the safety of such earthen structures requires in particular finding out more about the elementary mechanisms involved in soil erosion. Towards this end, an experimental work was undertaken in three steps. First, several model materials were developed, made of grains (mostly glass beads) with solid bridges at particle contacts whose mechanical yield strength can be continuously varied. Furthermore, for most of them, we succeeded in obtaining a translucent system for the purpose of direct visualization. Second, these materials were tested against surface erosion by an impinging jet to determine a critical shear stress and a kinetic coefficient. Note that an adapted device based on optical techniques (combination of Refractive Index Matching and Planar Laser Induced Fluorescence) was used specifically for the transparent media. Third, some specifically developed mechanical tests, and particularly traction tests, were implemented to estimate the mechanical strength of the solid bridges both at micro-scale (single contact) and at macro-scale (sample) and to investigate a supposed relationship with soil resistance to erosion.
Monopiles are currently the predominant foundation type for offshore wind turbines in Europe. Due to the increasing dimensions of the turbines, pile diameters beyond 10m become necessary. A design-relevant failure mode of monopiles is the local buckling of the pile wall in the embedded sections. Relevant buckling guidelines do not consider the soil-structure interaction specifically, although the embedment may allow for a reduction of wall thickness. However, Eurocode-based design concepts require a validation with comparative buckling cases for validation, either in terms of buckling curve parameters for both the algebraic stress-based and semi-numerical LBA/MNA design concept or as a calibration factor kGMNIA for fully numerical GMNIA calculations. These parameters are not yet available for embedded shells. To close this gap, we have conducted experiments on piles embedded in sand to investigate local buckling under soil-structure-interaction. The results will be used to calibrate numerical models. This research was carried out as part of the VERBATIM research project, funded by PTJ/BMWK and supported by the Carbon Trust's Offshore Wind Accelerator consortium.
In this contribution, we consider two applications in which probabilistic approaches can potentially complement or enhance the design and assessment of offshore wind turbine foundations. First, we illustrate in a numerical example that probabilistic modelling can be helpful in dealing with chang-es in turbine locations during the planning phase of an offshore wind farm. In this case, spatial probabilistic modelling of the ground conditions enables (a) an inference of the soil properties at the modified turbine location from field data collected at different locations across an offshore wind farm site and (b) an optimisation of further site investigations. Second, we discuss the uncer-tainties and risks associated with the installation of large diameter monopiles in soils with hetero-geneities such as strong layers and/or embedded boulders. Subsequently, we present a concept for modelling, understanding, and managing these risks based on a probabilistic model of the subgrade conditions, monopile, and subgrade-pile-interaction.