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Bayraktaroglu, H. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Korff, M. (author), Galavi, Vahid (author)Experimental studies show that initial fabric and its evolution under different stress paths highly influence soil behaviour. Even though different sample preparation methods create different inherent anisotropies and cause different material responses, the same initial fabric structure under different stress paths also results in different...journal article 2023
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Sorgatz, Julia (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Montenegro, Héctor (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)To protect embankments along German inland waterways against local slope sliding failure caused by ship-induced water level drawdown, they are mainly secured by bank revetments. Often, large embankment sections are designed on the basis of a limited number of field and laboratory tests. Thus, uncertainties arise with regard to the mechanical and...journal article 2023
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Bayraktaroglu, H. (author), Gonzalez Acosta, J.L. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Korff, M. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)Natural soil deposits may possess a highly anisotropic nature. The fabric anisotropy of soils which is induced during the soil formation process can lead to severe variation in field scale responses. Although the influence of fabric on the response of sands is well known and several advanced constitutive models have been developed to account for...conference paper 2023
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Gonzalez Acosta, J.L. (author), Varkey, D. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)Free-field site response analysis is a standard technique used to predict soil deposit dynamic response and liquefaction susceptibility. Such analyses are typically carried out by implementing periodic boundaries to guarantee the same speed of the dynamic waves travelling across them. However, when using random fields to consider the impact of...conference paper 2023
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Varkey, D. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author)Uncertainty is inevitable in the characterisation of a geotechnical site, especially due to the inherently heterogeneous nature of the ground. In this paper, a method for characterising a subsurface with limited cone penetration test (CPT) data is proposed. The method is based on integrating predictions of CPT parameters with a probabilistic...journal article 2023
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Yu, Beiyang (author), Varkey, D. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Rongier, G. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)This research focuses on investigating the relative performance of a range of machine learning algorithms, namely the artificial neural network, support vector machine, Gaussian process regression, random forest, and XGBoost, for predicting the undrained shear strength from cone penetration test data. This is to assess how machine learning could...conference paper 2023
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Varkey, D. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)Geological uncertainty can significantly influence the computed response of a geotechnical structure. For example, ignoring the presence of a weak soil layer embedded within a stronger layer and assuming a deterministic stratigraphic boundary can significantly underestimate the probability of failure. In this paper, the coupled Markov chain...conference paper 2023
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Golchin, A. (author), Guo, Y. (author), Vardon, P.J. (author), Liu, S. (author), Zhang, G. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)The coupling effect of initial shear stress and thermal cycles on the thermomechanical behaviour of clay concrete and sand-concrete interfaces has been studied. A set of drained monotonic direct shear tests was conducted at the soil-concrete interface level. Samples were initially sheared to half of the material's shear strength and then they...journal article 2023
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Wang, Bin (author), Wang, Di (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Feng, Xia Ting (author)Retrogressive failures occur in slopes consisting of sensitive materials such as snow or quick clay. They can be triggered by a small disturbance at the slope toe, but can cause propagated failure spreading miles away. Understanding the physical mechanism and predicting the retrogressive failure process are particularly important. Previous...journal article 2023
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Li, Z. (author), Liu, Haoyuan (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Pisano, F. (author)Offshore monopile foundations are exposed to misaligned wind and wave loadings, which are respectively dominated by (nearly) static and cyclic load components. While the response of these systems to unidirectional cyclic loading has been extensively investigated, only a few studies have been devoted to the realistic case of misaligned static...journal article 2023
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Guo, Y. (author), Golchin, A. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Liu, Songyu (author), Zhang, Guozhu (author), Vardon, P.J. (author)The effect of temperature on the monotonic and cyclic shearing response of a soil–structure interface is of critical importance for the application of thermal-active geo-structures. To investigate this, soils and soil–concrete interfaces were comprehensively tested with a temperature-controlled direct shear device under both fixed...journal article 2023
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Do, Phuong Chinh (author), Vardon, P.J. (author), Gonzalez Acosta, J.L. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)The material point method (MPM) is gaining an increasing amount of attention due to its capacity to solve geotechnical problems involving large deformations. Large deformations in geotechnics usually involve the failure process and therefore dynamic analyses are often carried out. However, simulating the (infinite) continuous domain using...conference paper 2023
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Gonzalez Acosta, J.L. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)Soil liquefaction is investigated considering a saturated soil deposit and by implementing standard techniques of random field theory to distribute initial void ratio values and assess liquefaction risk. The soil domain is represented in a 2-dimensional (2D) random finite element model for the dynamic analysis of coupled behavior. Multiple...conference paper 2023
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Zheng, X. (author), Seaid, Mohammed (author), Pisano, F. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Vardon, P.J. (author), Huvaj, Nejan (author), Osman, Ashraf S. (author)A hybrid material point/finite volume method for the numerical simulation of shallow water waves caused by large dynamic deformations in the bathymetry is presented. The proposed model consists of coupling the nonlinear shallow water equations for the water flow and a dynamic elastoplastic system for the seabed deformation. As a constitutive...journal article 2023
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Varkey, D. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author)The stability of six regional dyke cross-sections in the Netherlands was re-assessed using the random finite element method (RFEM), which explicitly accounts for the spatial variability of strength parameters. The RFEM assessments of the cross-sections were shown to result in significantly narrower response distributions than those obtained...conference paper 2023
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Bayraktaroglu, H. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author), Korff, M. (author)In this paper, a state-dependent semi-micromechanical framework for anisotropic sands is proposed. A simple constitutive model based on critical state theory and bounding surface (BS) plasticity is used to describe idealized micro-level soil behaviour, and a slip theory based multilaminate framework employed to create a link between the micro...conference paper 2023
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Hicks, M.A. (author)The spatial variability of soil properties influences material behaviour and the performance of geotechnical structures. It also leads to uncertainty in design, because one can never be certain about what the ground conditions are at every location across a site. This article introduces the concept and implications of spatial variability, and...conference paper 2022
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Gonzalez Acosta, J.L. (author), van den Eijnden, A.P. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)1D soil column techniques are widely used to evaluate the potential of liquefaction in a system of soil layers. This approach generally leads to large inaccuracies since (1) soil layers are hardly homogeneous and perfectly horizontal and (2) horizontal effects are neglected. To demonstrate the limitation of 1D strategies and the need for 2D...conference paper 2022
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Zheng, X. (author), Pisano, F. (author), Vardon, P.J. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)The Material Point Method (MPM) has been gaining increasing popularity as an appropriate approach to the solution of coupled hydro-mechanical problems involving large deformations. This study extends the implicit GIMP-patch method for coupled poroelastic problems recently proposed by Zheng et al. (2021b) to tackle large-deformation problems...journal article 2022
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Zheng, X. (author), Pisano, F. (author), Vardon, P.J. (author), Hicks, M.A. (author)This study presents the formulation and implementation of a fully implicit stabilised Material Point Method (MPM) for dynamic problems in two-phase porous media. In particular, the proposed method is built on a three-field formulation of the governing conservation laws, which uses solid displacement, pore pressure and fluid displacement as...journal article 2022