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Applied Sciences
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Experimental Works in Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges on Innovation and Reliability
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Special Issue "Experimental Works in Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges on Innovation and Reliability"

A special issue of Applied Sciences (ISSN 2076-3417). This special issue belongs to the section "Civil Engineering".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 October 2023 | Viewed by 1551

Special Issue Editor

Prof. Dr. Li Li

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor
Department of Civil, Geological and Mining Engineering, Polytechnique Montreal, Montreal, QC H3T 1J4, Canada
Interests: numerical modeling; mining backfill; backfilling of openings (trenches, silos, mine stopes); stability analysis; soil mechanics; rock mechanics; barricades
Special Issues, Collections and Topics in MDPI journals

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Experimental work is often necessary either in the laboratory or in field testing conditions. Both can involve uncertainties. As people generally focus much on innovation and less on reliability, the reproducibility of experimental results published even in some high-caliber journals is usually quite low. In geotechnical engineering, people follow some testing standards or norms to do their tests for obtaining material parameters. The reliability of used norms or standards is seldom questioned. For some, working on existing norms and standards lacks originality and novelty. For others, improvement of existing norms or standards is non-significant because geotechnical engineering is full of empiricism and lacks accuracy. The uncertainty is taken into account by the use of a factor of safety. These points of view are not wrong for a practitioner-engineer, but incomplete for a researcher. Innovation is necessary to push the edge of our knowledge further. Without reliability, however, test results can lead us to false conclusions. Innovation and reliability are both essential in research. To emphasize the importance of the two aspects, this Special Issue is calling for high quality articles, which should not only focus on the original and novel contributions, but also on the reliability of experimental results. Sufficient details should be provided in order for readers to be able to reproduce the authors’ test results.

Prof. Dr. Li Li
Guest Editor

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Applied Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2300 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • laboratory tests
  • field (in situ) measurement
  • monitoring
  • reliability
  • reproducibility
  • representativeness
  • testing norms
  • testing standards
  • experimental results
  • innovation

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Article
Modeling the Effects of Particle Shape on Damping Ratio of Dry Sand by Simple Shear Testing and Artificial Intelligence
by
Abolfazl Baghbani
,
Susanga Costa
,
Roohollah Shirani Faradonbeh
,
Amin Soltani
and
Hasan Baghbani
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(7), 4363; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13074363 - 29 Mar 2023
Cited by 3 | Viewed by 580
Abstract
This study investigates the effects of sand particle shape, in terms of roundness, sphericity and regularity, on the damping ratio of a dry sand material. Twelve different cyclic simple shear testing scenarios were considered and applied using vertical stresses of 50, 150 and [...] Read more.
This study investigates the effects of sand particle shape, in terms of roundness, sphericity and regularity, on the damping ratio of a dry sand material. Twelve different cyclic simple shear testing scenarios were considered and applied using vertical stresses of 50, 150 and 250 kPa and cyclic stress ratios (CSR) of 0.2, 0.3, 0.4 and 0.5 in both constant- and controlled-stress modes. Each testing scenario involved five tests, using the same sand that was reconstructed from its previous cyclic test. On completion of the cyclic tests, corresponding hysteresis loops were established to determine the damping ratio. The results indicated that the minimum and maximum damping ratios for this sand material were 6.9 and 25.5, respectively. It was observed that the shape of the sand particles changed during cyclic loading, becoming progressively more rounded and spherical with an increasing number of loading cycles, thereby resulting in an increase in the damping ratio. The second part of this investigation involved the development of artificial intelligence models, namely an artificial neural network (ANN) and a support vector machine (SVM), to predict the effects of sand particle shape on the damping ratio. The proposed ANN and SVM models were found to be effective in predicting the damping ratio as a function of the particle shape descriptors (i.e., roundness, sphericity and regularity), vertical stress, CSR and number of loading cycles. Finally, a sensitivity analysis was conducted to identify the importance of the input variables; the vertical stress and regularity were, respectively, ranked as first and second in terms of importance, while the CSR was found to be the least important parameter. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Experimental Works in Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges on Innovation and Reliability)
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Article
Study on Microstructure of Cemented Organic Soil in Dianchi Lake, China
by
Siyang Huang
,
Jing Cao
,
Yunfei Song
,
Zhigang Song
,
Hong Liu
and
Lin Tian
Appl. Sci. 2023, 13(3), 1825; https://doi.org/10.3390/app13031825 - 31 Jan 2023
Viewed by 466
Abstract
The organic soil in the Dianchi Lake area contains much humic acid (HA), and the impact of HA on cemented soil has attracted much attention. In this study, test soil is prepared based on the actual HA content of the soil in Dianchi [...] Read more.
The organic soil in the Dianchi Lake area contains much humic acid (HA), and the impact of HA on cemented soil has attracted much attention. In this study, test soil is prepared based on the actual HA content of the soil in Dianchi Lake, and cement is added to prepare samples. Unconfined compressive strength (UCS), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive analysis (EDS), and X-ray diffraction (XRD) tests are conducted on the samples. The strength development and microstructure changes of cemented organic soil are studied. The results show that (1) cemented soil strength decreases with the increase in HA content and increases with the cement mixing ratio; (2) SEM and EDS tests show that with the increase in HA content, the connection between soil particles gradually changed from surface–surface to point–surface, point–edge, or point–point connection. A large overhead structure is inside the cemented soil, and its integrity weakens with increased HA content. However, elements such as Ca, Si, and Al exist in the pores of cemented soil, indicating that cement hydration products are cemented between soil particles. XRD testing shows that with the increase in HA content, the intensity of the diffraction peaks of hydration products in cemented soil gradually decrease. (3) In general, HA will gradually deteriorate the integrity of cemented soil and reduce its strength. When the HA content is more than 15%, the effect of HA on strength is more prominent. However, increasing the cement mixing ratio can effectively weaken HA’s negative effect on cemented soil’s strength. When the cement mixing ratio is between 15% and 25%, the strength of cemented soil with high HA content can be effectively increased. However, this approach is not conducive to the protection of the environment. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Experimental Works in Geotechnical Engineering: Challenges on Innovation and Reliability)
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