The Liquefaction and Displacement of Highly Saturated Sand under Water Pressure Oscillation

In order to investigate the characteristics of water wave induced liquefaction in highly saturated sand in vertical direction, a one-dimensional model of highly saturated sand to water pressure oscillation is presented based oil the two-phase continuous media theory. The development of the effective stresses and the liquefaction thickness are analyzed. It is shown that water pressure oscillating loading affects liquefaction severely and the developing rate of liquefaction increases with the decreasing of the sand strength or the increasing of the loading strength. It is shown also that there is obvious phase lag in the sand Column. If the sand permeability is non-uniform, the pore pressure and the strain rise sharply at which the smallest permeability occurs. This solution may explain Why the fracture occurs in the sand column in some conditions.

Liquefaction and Displacement of Saturated Sand Under Vertical Vibration Loading

In order to investigate the influence of the vertical vibration loading on the liquefaction of saturated sand, one dimensional model for the saturated sand with a vertical vibration is presented based on the two phase continuous media theory. The development of the liquefaction and the liquefaction region are analyzed. It is shown that the vertical vibration loading could induce liquefaction. The rate of the liquefaction increases with the increase of the initial limit strain or initial porosity or amplitude and frequency of loading, and increases with the decrease of the permeability or initial modulus. It is shown also that there is a phase lag in the sand column. When the sand permeability distribution is non-uniform, the pore pressure and the strain will rise sharply where the permeability is the smallest, and fracture might be induced. With the development of liquefaction, the strength of the soil foundation becomes smaller and smaller. In the limiting case, landslides or debris flows could occur.

Room-temperature continuous-wave lasing from InAs GaAs quantum dot laser grown by molecular beam epitaxy

Quantum dot lasers are predicted to have proved lasing characteristics compared to quantum well and quantum wire lasers. We report on quantum dot lasers with active media of vertically stacked InAs quantum dots layers grown by molecular beam epitaxy. The laser diodes were fabricated and the threshold current density of 220 A/cm(2) was achieved at room temperature with lasing wavelength of 951 nm. The characteristic temperature To was measured to be 333K and 157K for the temperature range of 40-180K and 180-300K, respectively.

Evolution of Localized Damage Zone in Heterogeneous Media

Evolution of localized damage zone is a key to catastrophic rupture in heterogeneous materials. In the present article, the evolutions of strain fields of rock specimens are investigated experimentally. The observed evolution of fluctuations and autocorrelations of strain fields under uniaxial compression demonstrates that the localization of deformation always appears ahead of catastrophic rupture. In particular, the localization evolves pronouncedly with increasing deformation in the rock experiments. By means of the definition of the zone with high strain rate and likely damage localization, it is found that the size of the localized zone decreases from the sample size at peak load to an eventual value. Actually, the deformation field beyond peak load is bound to suffer bifurcation, namely an elastic unloading part and a continuing but localized damage part will co-exist in series in a specimen. To describe this continuous bifurcation and localization process observed in experiments, a model on continuum mechanics is developed. The model can explain why the decreasing width of localized zone can lead stable deformation to unstable, but it still has not provided the complete equations governing the evolution of the localized zone.

Parameters Inversion of Fluid-Saturated Porous Media Based on Neural Networks

The multi-layers feedforward neural network is used for inversion of material constants of fluid-saturated porous media. The direct analysis of fluid-saturated porous media is carried out with the boundary element method. The dynamic displacement responses obtained from direct analysis for prescribed material parameters constitute the sample sets training neural network. By virtue of the effective L-M training algorithm and the Tikhonov regularization method as well as the GCV method for an appropriate selection of regularization parameter, the inverse mapping from dynamic displacement responses to material constants is performed. Numerical examples demonstrate the validity of the neural network method.

Kramers Escape Rate in Nonlinear Diffusive Media

In this paper, we study nonlinear Kramers problem by investigating overdamped systems ruled by the one-dimensional nonlinear Fokker-Planck equation. We obtain an analytic expression for the Kramers escape rate under quasistationary conditions by employing

State Vector: A New Approach to Prediction of the Failure of Brittle Heterogeneous Media and Large Earthquakes

The concept of state vector stems from statistical physics, where it is usually used to describe activity patterns of a physical field in its manner of coarsegrain. In this paper, we propose an approach by which the state vector was applied to describe quantitatively the damage evolution of the brittle heterogeneous systems, and some interesting results are presented, i.e., prior to the macro-fracture of rock specimens and occurrence of a strong earthquake, evolutions of the four relevant scalars time series derived from the state vectors changed anomalously. As retrospective studies, some prominent large earthquakes occurred in the Chinese Mainland (e.g., the M 7.4 Haicheng earthquake on February 4, 1975, and the M 7.8 Tangshan earthquake on July 28, 1976, etc) were investigated. Results show considerable promise that the time-dependent state vectors could serve as a kind of precursor to predict earthquakes.

Catastrophic Rupture Induced Damage Coalescence in Heterogeneous Brittle Media

In heterogeneous brittle media, the evolution of damage is strongly influenced by the multiscale coupling effect. To better understand this effect, we perform a detailed investigation of the damage evolution, with particular attention focused on the catastrophe transition. We use an adaptive multiscale finite-element model (MFEM) to simulate the damage evolution and the catastrophic failure of heterogeneous brittle media. Both plane stress and plane strain cases are investigated for a heterogeneous medium whose initial shear strength follows the Weibull distribution. Damage is induced through the application of the Coulomb failure criterion to each element, and the element mesh is refined where the failure criterion is met. We found that as damage accumulates, there is a stronger and stronger nonlinear increase in stress and the stress redistribution distance. The coupling of the dynamic stress redistribution and the heterogeneity at different scales result in an inverse cascade of damage cluster size, which represents rapid coalescence of damage at the catastrophe transition.

Long-Range Stress Redistribution Resulting From Damage in Heterogeneous Media

It has been shown in CA simulations and data analysis of earthquakes that declustered or characteristic large earthquakes may occur with long-range stress redistribution. In order to understand long-range stress redistribution, we propose a linear-elastic but heterogeneous-brittle model. The stress redistribution in the heterogeneous-brittle medium implies a longer-range interaction than that in an elastic medium. Therefore, it is surmised that the longer-range stress redistribution resulting from damage in heterogeneous media may be a plausible mechanism governing main shocks.

Adaptive Mesh Refinement FEM for Damage Evolution of Heterogeneous Brittle Media

Damage evolution of heterogeneous brittle media involves a wide range of length scales. The coupling between these length scales underlies the mechanism of damage evolution and rupture. However, few of previous numerical algorithms consider the effects of the trans-scale coupling effectively. In this paper, an adaptive mesh refinement FEM algorithm is developed to simulate this trans-scale coupling. The adaptive serendipity element is implemented in this algorithm, and several special discontinuous base functions are created to avoid the incompatible displacement between the elements. Both the benchmark and a typical numerical example under quasi-static loading are given to justify the effectiveness of this model. The numerical results reproduce a series of characteristics of damage and rupture in heterogeneous brittle media.

Permeability of Fractal Porous Media by Monte Carlo Simulations

The permeability of the fractal porous media is simulated by Monte Carlo technique in this work. Based oil the fractal character of pore size distribution in porous media, the probability models for pore diameter and for permeability are derived. Taking the bi-dispersed fractal porous media as examples, the permeability calculations are performed by the present Monte Carlo method. The results show that the present simulations present a good agreement compared with the existing fractal analytical solution in the general interested porosity range. The proposed simulation method may have the potential in prediction of other transport properties (such as thermal conductivity, dispersion conductivity and electrical conductivity) in fractal porous media, both saturated and unsaturated.

A generalized model for the effective thermal conductivity of porous media based on self-similarity

A generalized model for the effective thermal conductivity of porous media is derived based on the fact that statistical self-similarity exists in porous media. The proposed model assumes that porous media consist of two portions: randomly distributed non-touching particles and self-similarly distributed particles contacting each other with resistance. The latter are simulated by Sierpinski carpets with side length L = 13 and cutout size C = 3, 5, 7 and 9, respectively, depending upon the porosity concerned. Recursive formulae are presented and expressed as a function of porosity, ratio of areas, ratio of component thermal conductivities and contact resistance, and there is no empirical constant and every parameter has a clear physical meaning. The model predictions are compared with the existing experimental data, and good agreement is found in a wide range of porosity of 0.14-0.80, and this verifies the validity of the proposed model.

A geometry model for tortuosity of flow path in porous media

A simple geometry model for tortuosity of flow path in porous media is proposed based on the assumption that some particles in a porous medium are unrestrictedly overlapped and the others are not. The proposed model is expressed as a function of porosity and there is no empirical constant in this model. The model predictions are compared with those from available correlations obtained numerically and experimentally, both of which are in agreement with each other. The present model can also give the tortuosity with a good approximation near the percolation threshold. The validity of the present tortuosity model is thus verified.