Stability of foundations near slopes is one of the important and complicated problems in geotechnical engineering, which has been investigated by various methods such as limit equilibrium, limit analysis, slip-line, finite element and discrete element. The complexity of this problem is resulted from the combination of two probable failures: foundation failure and overall slope failure. The curr...

In the current paper the results of a numerical simulation that were verified by a well instrumented experimental procedure for studying the arching effect over a trapdoor in sand is presented. To simulate this phenomenon with continuum mechanics, the experimental procedure is modeled in ABAQUS code using stress dependent hardening in elastic state and plastic strain dependent frictional harden...

A charged system search algorithm (CSS) is applied to the optimal cost design of water distribution networks. This algorithm is inspired by the Coulomb and Gauss’s laws of electrostatics in physics. The CSS utilizes a number of charged particles which influence each other based on their fitness values and their separation distances considering the governing law of Coulomb. The well-known benchm...

The objective of this review is to examine how the concept of plasticity is used in geophysical fluid dynamics. Rapid mass movements such s snow avalanches or debris flows involve slurries of solid particles (ice, boulder, clay, etc.) within an interstitial fluid (air, water). The bulk ehavior of these materials has often been modeled as plastic materials, i.e., a plastic material yields and st...

The present contribution deals with the numerical modeling of railway track-supporting systems-using coupled finite-infinite elements-to represent the near and distant field stress distribution, and also employing a thin layer interface element to account for the interfacial behavior between sleepers and ballast. To simulate the relative debonding, slipping and crushing at the contact area betw...

This paper is concerned with the intermediate-term prediction of the forthcoming M7 ~ 8 class earthquake on the plate boundary, off the east coast of Miyagi Prefecture, northern Japan, which is the highest probability among the long-term forecast announced to the public. Regional seismicity in the regions of stress-shadow preceding each of the previous ruptures in 1936 and 1978 shows quiescence...