There are various methods for stabilizing excavations in urban areas which one of them is the nailing method. Designing a nailing system and analyzing the performance of excavations is done by various software applications. One of these computer programs is PAXIS software which run based on the finite element method (FEM). In the present study, a numerical analysis of the performance of t...

The shear strength parameters of soil such as cohesion (C) and angle of internal friction (φ )govern the bearing capacity of shallow or deep foundations, the stability of the hill slopes as well as slopes of dams and embankments, design of retaining structures etc. in most of the civil engineering practices. In this study, artificial neural network (ANN) with the feed-forward back-propagation a...

In this research work, a 3D numerical modeling technique is proposed based on the 3D particle flow code in order to investigate the failure mechanism of rock foundations. Two series of footings with different geometries and areas are considered in this work. The failure mechanism obtained is similar to that of the Terzaghi’s but there is a negligible difference in between. Lastly, one equation ...

This paper presents the results of a laboratory investigation to determine the geotechnical properties of fresh municipal solid waste (MSW) collected from the working phase of Orchard Hills Landfill located in Davis Junction (Illinois, USA). Laboratory testing was conducted on shredded MSW to determine the compaction, hydraulic conductivity, compressibility, and shear strength properties at in-...

Flowability - as measured by hopper discharge rate, angle of repose and Carr's index (CI) - of surface modified microcrystalline cellulose granules was investigated experimentally. Three-dimensional simulations of the granule flow were performed, using the discrete element method (DEM), including either sliding and rolling friction or sliding friction and cohesion in the model. Granule surface ...

This paper aims to study the mechanical behaviour and failure mechanism of intact rocks under different loading conditions using the grain based model implemented in the universal distinct element code (UDEC). The grain based numerical model is a powerful tool to investigate complicated micro-structural mechanical behaviour of rocks. In the UDEC grain based model, the intact material is simulat...

We present an active approach for discriminating different materials by impulsively contacting (hitting) them, and sensing and interpreting the resulting sounds. In theory, the angle of internal friction is diagnostic of material, but invariant over object shape. In our experiments, we observe that the angle of internal friction is not invariant over the frequency of the sound spectrum for whic...