Probabilistic Analysis of Velocity Distribution under Earth Embankments for Piping Investigation

Piping has been attributed as a major cause of dam and embankment failures. Current national prediction models to predict piping use the hydraulic gradient between the upstream and downstream water levels as an indicator. They are deterministic and take no account of preferential pathways. However, piping usually initiates from a discrete...

Analyzing Spatial Variability of Geologic Profiles for Four Sites in Hong Kong

This paper investigates the spatial variability characteristics of geologic profiles, including variations in thickness of marine clay deposits and rockhead levels, based on borehole data obtained from four sites in Hong Kong. The numbers of boreholes are approximately 100 in two cases, while the other two cases comprise more than 300 boreholes...

Scale of Fluctuation for Geotechnical Probabilistic Analysis

In the past few years, random field theory has been increasingly used to model the inherent soil variability. The scale of fluctuation is one of the important parameters describing a stationary random field. In this study, the factors affecting an accurate estimation of the scale of fluctuation were studied with numerical experiments to show how...