The reliability index is an important reliability parameter that is necessary for the development of reliability-based geotechnical design. Both the factor of safety (FS) and the reliability index (β) represent safety margin of structures against either failure or limit state. In this study, the reliability index is analyzed and evaluated in reference to the factor of safety currently adopted i...

Pile heat exchangers – where heat transfer pipes are cast into the building piled foundations – offer an opportunity to use ground energy systems without the additional construction costs related to the provision of special purpose heat exchangers. However, analysis methods for pile heat exchangers are still under development. In particular there is an absence of available methods and guidance ...

The problem of soil±pile±foundation±superstructure interaction is examined, and a simple rational procedure to analyse the response of a structure supported on pile groups is presented. This procedure combines theories for the computation of the dynamic impedances and kinematic±seismic response factors of pile foundations with a multi-degree-of-freedom structural model. The procedure is applied...

We consider a modified Bouchaud-Cates-Ravi Prakash-Edwards model for pile surface dynamics, and show that in the long-scale limit this model converges to a quasistationary model of pile growth in the form of an evolutionary variational inequality.

The wind turbine foundation serves as a permanent construction in the harsh marine corrosive environment, its anticorrosion design is essential to the safe use of the wind turbine structure. At present, there is a significant controversy over the local corrosion mechanism (such as pitting corrosion, and crevice corrosion) and its diffusion mechanism in the academic circle. In the paper, the Far...

This paper presents the influence of non-linearity on the dynamic response of floating pile foundation subject to vertical vibration. A detailed theoretical investigation of stiffness and damping parameters is made for floating piles with different shear modulus reduction ratio of the weak zone soil. The accuracy of the non-linear analysis for predicting the dynamic response depends upon the ch...

Pile scour may cause instability to the structures they support. Ensuring a safe and economically sound design is essential for the wider community. Although much laboratory research has been carried out on scour at pile groups, there are still significant gaps in prediction formulae. This study has been conducted to develop a formula for scour at pile arrangements of non-uniform spacing. The s...

Here we show that variations of temperature, even of a few degrees in amplitude, induce the ageing of a granular pile. In particular, we report measurements of physical properties of a granular heap submitted to thermal cycles. Namely, we focus on the evolution of the thermal linear-expansion coefficient and of the thermal conductivity of the pile with the number of cycles. The present contribu...

The sand pile model was introduced by Bak, Tang and Wiesenfeld (see [BTW88]) in the context of selforganized criticality. Since then, there has been a lot of work on this model and related models, especially from the graph-theoretical point of view (see, e.g., [ALSSTW89, GK93, GMP]). In the classical model, designed by Brylawski for another purpose (see [Bry73]), a sand pile is a decreasing seq...