Probabilistic classification of soils based on Local Average Subdivision method and CPT data

A random field generator based on Local Average Subdivision (LAS) method is proposed in this study in order to achieve probabilistic soil classification and quantify the uncertainty of the generated most probable geological cross section. CPT data and Robertson’s soil classification chart (1990) are adopted to classify the soil. The sole...

Probabilistic Analysis at Ultimate Limit State of Strip Footings Resting on a Spatially Varying Soil Using Subset Simulation Approach

The failure probability of geotechnical structures with spatially varying soil properties is generally computed using Monte Carlo simulation (MCS) methodology. This approach is well known to be very time-consuming when dealing with small failure probabilities. One alternative to MCS is the subset simulation approach. This approach was mainly...

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...

Stability Analysis of Unsaturated Soil Slope Considering the Variability of Soil-water Characteristic Curve

Soil slopes are generally unsaturated in which the soil-water characteristic curve (SWCC) plays an important role in its hydro-mechanical response. The commonly used Mohr-Coulomb failure criterion in saturated soil mechanics could be extended to take SWCC into account which is then able to determine the shear strength of unsaturated soil. Like...

Safety assessment of a shallow foundation using the random finite element method

In this paper, the reliability assessment of the bearing capacity of a shallow strip footing was conducted using a reliability index β. In applicable standards (Eurocode 7) there is not presented any explicit method of an evaluation of characteristic values of soil parameters. Therefore some approaches of an estimation of characteristic values...

Accounting for Uncertainty and Variability in Geotechnical Characterization of Offshore Sites

This paper presents an overview on how uncertainty and variability of mechanical soil properties are dealt with in offshore site investigation and presents some ideas for utilizing the reliability tools in a more optimal manner for this purpose. Two types of problems are addressed. First, how to extract the maximum amount of information from...