SYNOPSIS Results of unconsolidated-undrained triaxial tests, field vane shear tests and cone penetration tests have been used to develop correlations between undrained shear strength and cone resistance for a soft to medium alluvial clay in the Lopez Canyon area of San Diego. When comparing uu triaxial results with cone resistance, the average cone factor was 11 with a standard deviation of 1.5...

The aim of this paper is to numerically investigate the development, thickness and orientation of shear bands, in biaxial test with two approaches towards solving problems of continuum mechanics, namely the meshless "Soft PARticle" method and the mesh based Finite Element method. Soft PArticle Code (SPARC) is a straightforward collocation numerical method based on strong formulation, in which a...

During the last decades eco-friendly, low-cost, sustainable construction materials for utilization in civil engineering projects have attracted much attention. To this end, soilcretes are non-conventional construction materials produced by mixing natural soil such as natural clay or limestone sand with a hydraulic binder and are recently under detailed and in-depth investigation by many researc...

Tangible user interfaces (TUIs) provide physical form to digital information and computation, facilitating the direct manipulation of bits. Our goal in TUI development is to empower collaboration, learning, and decision-making by using digital technology and at the same time taking advantage of human abilities to grasp and manipulate physical objects and materials. This paper presents a new gen...

-Three methods were developed that allow for the imaging of any clay mineral in aqueous solutions with atomic force microscopy (AFM). The methods involve fixing the particles onto special substrates that do not complicate the imaging process, but hold the particles sufficiently so that they do not move laterally or float away during imaging. Two techniques depend on electrostatic attraction und...

Microscopic soft tissues have been identified in fossil vertebrate remains collected from various lithologies. However, the diagenetic mechanisms to preserve such tissues have remained elusive. While previous studies have described infiltration of biofilms in Haversian and Volkmann’s canals, biostratinomic alteration (e.g., trampling), and iron derived from hemoglobin as playing roles in the pr...

The effects of four soil types, soil porosity, particle size, and organic matter were tested on survival and migration of Xiphinema americanum. Survival and migration were significantly greater in silt loam than in clay loam and silty clay soils. Nematode numbers were significantly greater in softs planted with soybeans than in fallow softs. Nematode survival was greatest at the higher of two p...

We studied the elastic moduli, ductile creep behavior, and brittle strength of shale-gas reservoir rocks from Barnett, Haynesville, Eagle Ford, and Fort St. John shale in a series of triaxial laboratory experiments. We found a strong correlation between the shale compositions, in particular, the volume of clay plus kerogen and intact rock strength, frictional strength, and viscoplastic creep. V...