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An important concern in rock mechanics is non-homogeneity as joints or fault. Adopting the joints as fractures, fractures are well known for their effects on the mechanical and transport properties of rock. It has been postulated that through fractured/jointed rock, mainly, the polygons turned to the shear vector (ti) are involved in the mobilization of shear resistance. Consequently, in order to locate the contact areas implicated into the shear-test it was firstly necessary to fix the shear direction. Moreover, since laboratory observations clearly show that only the steepest polygon surfaces touch the other sample, the identification of the potential sliding areas only requires the determination of the polygons which are faced to the shear direction and which, among them, are steep enough to be involved. The methodology to be discussed here is modeling of slip on the local and global levels due to the distribution of deformation procedure of the rock joint. Upon the presented methodology, more attention has been given to slip initiation and propagation through rock joint. In particular, softening in non-linear behaviour of joint in going from the peak to residual strengths imparts a behaviour often associated with progressive failure. A multi-plane based model is developed and used to compute plastic strain distribution and failure mechanism of rock joints. Validity of the presented model was examined by comparing numerical and test results showing the behavior of both homogeneous and jointed rock samples under general stress conditions.

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In recent years, soil reinforcement is considered of great importance in many different civil projects. One of the most significant applications of soil reinforcement is in road construction. Sub grade soil and its properties are very important in the design of road pavement structure. Its main function is to give adequate support to the pavement from beneath. Therefore, it should have a sufficient load carrying capacity. The use of geosynthetics in road and airfield construction has shown the potential to increase the soil bearing capacity. One category of geosynthetics to particular, geogrid, has gained increasing acceptance in road construction. A geogrid is a geosynthetic material consisting of connected parallel sets of tensile ribs with apertures of sufficient size to allow strike-through of surrounding soil, stone, or other geotechnical material. Geogrid reinforcement of sub grade soil is achieved through the increase of frictional interaction between the soil and the reinforcement. Geogrid have been successfully used to provide a construction platform over subgrades. In this application, the geogrid improves the ability to obtain compaction in overlying aggregates, while reducing the amount of material required be removing and replacing. Relative agreement exists that substantial benefits can be achieved from the inclusion of geogrids within the pavement systems however, the quantity of the improvement is in relative disagreement. This paper presents the effects of plasticity index and also reinforcing of soft clay on CBR values. Three samples of clay with different plasticity index (PI) values are selected and tested without reinforcement. Then by placing one and two layer of geogrid at certain depth within sample height, the effects of reinforcement and PI on CBR values are investigated in both soaked and unsoaked conditions. The results shows that as the PI increase the CBR value decreases and reinforcing clay with geogrid will increase the CBR value.

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A semi-micromechanical multilaminate model is introduced here to predict the mechanical behavior of soils.

This model is like a bridge between micro and macro scale upon the satisfaction of minimum potential energy level

during any applied stress/strain increments. The concept of this model is based on a certain number of sampling planes

which constitute the elastic-plastic behavior of the soil. The soil behavior presents as the summation of behavior on

these planes. A simple unconventional constitutive equations are used in each of the planes to describe the behavior

of these planes separately. An unconventional plasticity can predict the soil behavior as a smooth curve with

considering plastic deformation due to change of stress state inside the yield surface. The model is capable of

predicting softening behavior of the soil in a reasonable manner due to using unconventional plasticity. The influences

of induced anisotropy are included in a rational way without any additional hypotheses owing to in-nature properties

of the multilaminate framework. Results of this model are compared with test data and reasonable agreement is found.

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 Neither damage mechanics model nor elastoplastic constitutive law can solely describe the behavior of concrete satisfactorily. In fact, they both fail to represent proper unloading slopes during cyclic loading. To overcome the disadvantages of pure plastic models and pure damage approaches, the combined effects need to be considered. In this regard, various classes of plastic-damage models have been recently proposed. Here, the theoretical basics of the plastic-damage model originally proposed by Lubliner et al. and later on modified by Lee and Fenves is initially presented and its numerical aspects in three-dimensional space are subsequently emphasized. It should be mentioned that a part of the implementation in 3-D space needs to be reformulated due to employing a hyperbolic potential function to treat the singularity of the original linear form of plastic flow proposed by Lee and Fenves. The consistent algorithmic tangent stiffness, which is utilized to accelerate the convergence rate in solving the nonlinear global equations, is also derived. The validation and evaluation of the model to capture the desired behavior under monotonic and cyclic loadings are shown with several simple one-element tests. These basic simulations confirm the robustness, accuracy, and efficiency of the algorithm at the local and global levels. At the end, a four-point bending test is examined to demonstrate the capabilities of the model in real 3-D applications.

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Foundations behavior is affected by soil behavior which can vary from dilative to contractive depending on the stress level,

particularly in dense frictional soils. The Zero Extension Lines (ZEL) method has been generally developed to predict the

foundations behavior. Knowledge of soil behavior enables the ZEL method to predict the general and local shear failure modes.

In this paper, a relatively simple work hardening/softening soil constitutive model is developed to represent dense frictional soils

behavior under different stress levels. This model is based on the accumulation of the plastic work during a simple direct shear

test and its relationship to stress ratio to establish the hardening law. Verifications have been made for the developed soil model.

The model is then implemented into the ZEL method to theoretically investigate the bearing capacity and load-displacement

behavior of foundations over dense frictional soils. Utilization of this model enables the ZEL method to capture different modes

of failure depending on the foundation size. A numerical study on foundations behavior was performed showing the ability of the

presented approach in capturing both failure modes.

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The seismic behavior of frame bridges is generally evaluated using nonlinear static analysis with different plasticity models hence this paper tends to focus on the effectiveness of the two most common nonlinear modeling approaches comprising of concentrated and distributed plasticity models. A three-span prestressed concrete frame bridge in Tehran, Iran, including a pair of independent parallel bridge structures was selected as the model of the study. The parallel bridges were composed of identical decks with the total length of 215 meters supported on different regular and irregular substructures with non-prismatic piers. To calibrate the analytical modeling, a large-scale experimental and analytical seismic study on a two-span reinforced concrete bridge system carried out at the University of Nevada Reno was used. The comparison of the results shows the accuracy of analytical studies. In addition, close correlation between results obtained from two nonlinear modeling methods depicts that the lumped plasticity approach can be decisively considered as the useful tool for the nonlinear modeling of non-prismatic bridge piers with hollow sections due to its simple modeling assumption and less computational time.

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This paper presents a model for prediction of the mechanical behavior of sand-gravel mixtures using generalized plasticity and critical state concepts. Proposed model is based on the difference between critical state lines of sand and sand-gravel mixture in e-Lnp' plane. A generalized plasticity model is considered as the base model for sandy soil. Its state parameter, dilation rate and hardening function are modified to involve the effects of gravel particles on the behavior of mixture. Gravel content is considered as a physical parameter for determination of four new added parameters of the model. Verification of the proposed model performed considering four sets of experiments conducted by different researchers on poorly graded sand-gravel mixtures. According to the results, proposed model provides satisfactory qualitative and quantitative predictions of the behavior of sand-gravel mixture. Stress- strain behavior besides volumetric strains in drained condition and induced pore pressure during undrained loading are satisfactory predicted which indicates the possibility of its application in boundary value problems of geotechnical engineering.