MH
M.A. Hicks
158 records found
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Soil variability from high-resolution S-wave full-waveform inversion
Deriving reliable cone-tip resistance from Vs for geotechnical evaluations
Capturing the spatial variability in soil is crucial for ground response analyses in the context of seismic hazard mitigation. The lateral variability in thickness and properties of the different soil layers is one of the main factors that determines the variability of the ground
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As the Material Point Method (MPM) uses both a mesh and a point discretisation scheme, the application of boundary conditions is difficult, currently limiting the flexibility of the method. While many boundary condition options have been used in the literature, the accuracy of Ne
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This paper investigates the implementation of a nonlocal regularisation of the material point method to mitigate mesh-dependency issues for the simulation of large deformation problems in brittle soils. The adopted constitutive description corresponds to a simple elastoplastic mo
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Stratification identification and spatial interpolation play a fundamental role in geotechnical site characterization. A unified approach is needed to perform these two tasks simultaneously to reduce overall uncertainty in site characterization. This paper explores the applicabil
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The absence of information on lateral variability in the soil is detrimental to estimating accurately the local site response in the event of an earthquake. To address this problem, the use of densely sampled seismic data together with sparsely distributed but detailed vertical s
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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 tempera
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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
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Interplay Between Friction and Cohesion
A Spectrum of Retrogressive Slope Failure
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 retro
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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 initiall
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Experimental studies show that initial fabric and its evolution under different stress paths greatly influences soil behaviour. Even though different sample preparation methods create different inherent anisotropies and cause different material responses, the same initial fabric
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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 ela
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On the design of bank revetments at inland waterways subjected to ship-induced water level drawdown
A probabilistic infinite slope analysis
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
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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
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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
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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 studi
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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
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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 mul
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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 p
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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 sig
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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
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