The face stability of shallow tunnels was investigated with small-scale model experiments at single gravity. Aim of the research was to detect the evolution of failure mechanisms in dense and loose soil samples with varying overburden above the tunnel. Moreover, the quality of proposed theoretical/numerical approaches for the determination of a necessary support pressure pf was assessed. The re...

Over the past three years, BMW has undertaken a significant project to first investigate, then proceed with migration from its present crash simulation software to ABAQUS. This project has been motivated by a growing recognition within BMW that, in order to advance its crash simulation methods, improved robustness in the software employed, along with a greater emphasis on physically-motivated s...

In this paper an attempt is made to offer insights into local slope failure mechanisms from the perspective of hydrogeology. The hypothesis examined envisages that the hydraulic conductivity distribution in a weathered profile includes a relatively high hydraulic conductivity zone associated with the jointed rock mass near rockhead. There is evidence locally for such a condition. The groundwate...

System lifespan modeling becomes more complicated when an external event causes the succession of failure in 2 or more system components. Models that don’t consider this common cause failure cause the wrong estimation of system reliability. Let us assume that there are data composed of numbers of successive failures in i, i = 1, ... , n out of n components of system. Data having these character...

In this study, the deformation and damage mechanisms on meso and macro scales in a particulate composite and a polyurethane material, Solithane 113, were investigated. The particulate composite contains 87% by weight of hard particles embedded in a rubbery matrix. Experimental data were analyzed and the effect of material’s microstructure on the deformation and failure mechanisms are discussed.

Warranty data contain useful information about product quality and reliability, but they are usually coarse data because they may be aggregated, delayed, censored, missing or vague. They might, however, be the only forms of warranty data a manufacturer has, analysing such data are therefore needed and can also be of benefit to manufacturers in identifying early warnings of abnormalities in thei...

Power electronic devices are susceptible to catastrophic failures when they are exposed to energetic particles; the most serious failure mechanism is single event burnout (SEB). SEB is a widely recognized problem for space applications, but it also may affect devices in terrestrial applications. This phenomenon has been studied in detail for power MOSFETs, but much less is known about the mecha...